April 2026 — NASA's Artemis II mission carried four astronauts around the Moon and brought them safely home. The first humans to leave low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. Here are the mission's key moments.
LatestThe Orion spacecraft Integrity splashed down southwest of San Diego (32.3°N 117.8°W) with Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen all in good health. Total mission duration: 9 days, 1 hour, 32 minutes. First U.S. Navy recovery of a NASA crewed spacecraft since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975.
On Artemis I, Orion's Avcoat heat shield shed more material than predicted — trapped gases couldn't vent during the long skip-entry exit from the atmosphere. For Artemis II, NASA **did not swap the heat shield**. They modified the reentry profile instead: shorter time outside the atmosphere plus refined Avcoat block bonding. Integrity came home cleanly.
At 252,756 miles / 406,771 km from Earth, Artemis II set a new farthest-from-home record for a crewed spacecraft, surpassing Apollo 13's 248,655 mi / 400,171 km (April 1970). NASA's news release that day: "NASA's Artemis II Crew Eclipses Record for Farthest Human Spaceflight."
As Orion passed behind the Moon, all radio contact with Earth cut out for about 40 minutes. Closest approach: ~4,067 miles above the lunar surface. Wiseman captured this lunar close-up through the window — NASA later named the photo "A Mesmerizing Moon." Collins spent 48 minutes in lunar far-side silence alone in 1969; this time, all four crew went through it together.
On the return journey, past the farthest point from Earth, the crew posed for this in-cabin group shot inside Integrity. Orange intravehicular activity suits, Earth-light filtering through the window behind them. Johnson Space Center catalogued it as "Group Shot" — it's already one of the defining images of the Artemis era.
The Space Launch System (SLS Block 1) ignited from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39B. SLS is NASA's most powerful operational rocket — 8.8 million pounds of thrust (39 MN), four RS-25 main engines plus two five-segment solid rocket boosters. After booster separation, Orion entered a free-return translunar trajectory — a figure-8 around the Moon, no lunar orbit insertion.
The fully stacked SLS + Orion rolled from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Pad 39B on the same crawler-transporter that carried Saturn V for Apollo — 58 years old and still in service. The 6.4-kilometer trip took 11 hours at 1.6 km/h.
The crew named their Orion spacecraft "Integrity" — citing "trust, respect, candor, and humility," and a nod to integrating 300,000+ components into a single vehicle. The mission patch, designed by Gregory Manchess, frames an Apollo 8-style Earthrise inside a stylized Artemis bow. The two strokes of the Roman "II" also spell ALL — for all humanity.
Reid Wiseman (Commander, U.S. Navy) · Victor Glover (Pilot, U.S. Navy) · Christina Koch (Mission Specialist 1, NASA) · Jeremy Hansen (Mission Specialist 2, Canadian Space Agency). Shot two years before launch in Orion's orange intravehicular activity suits. Standard official portrait NASA issues for each mission.
Hansen is a Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot and CSA astronaut. As Mission Specialist 2 on Artemis II, he became the **first non-American to fly a lunar mission in human history**. Canada earned the seat through long-running cooperation — including the Canadarm3 robotic arm for the lunar Gateway station.
Artemis I was the uncrewed lunar flyby flown in November 2022 — the first test of Orion in deep space and atmospheric reentry. That night launch lit up Florida's east coast for 500 miles. Heat shield char loss exceeded predictions (later addressed on Artemis II via trajectory modification), but the system performed well enough for NASA to put crew aboard.
NASA revised the Artemis roadmap in February 2026: **Artemis III (2027) is now an Earth-orbit rendezvous test** — the crew will dock with SpaceX's Starship HLS and/or Blue Origin's Blue Moon in low Earth orbit to validate the lander, then return. **No lunar landing.** **Artemis IV (2028)** becomes the first crewed lunar-surface mission — including the first woman and the first person of color to walk on the Moon. Target: lunar south pole.
All images on this page are NASA, ESA, JAXA, CNSA, ISRO, or other space-agency public-domain archival materials, sourced via Wikimedia Commons; each image is credited to its specific photographer/institution inline. Fact sources: NASA History Office mission press kits, peer-reviewed journals (Nature, Geophysical Research Letters), space-agency official archives, Wikipedia cross-referenced. All quotes are from the historical record with sources given.