Artemis II Astronauts Return to Earth, Ending Historic Moon Mission

The Artemis II capsule and its four-member crew streaked through Earth's atmosphere and safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday after nearly ten days in space, capping the first voyage by humans to the vicinity of the moon in over half a century.

NASA's gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, parachuted gently into the sea off the Southern California coast shortly after 5 p.m. PT, concluding a mission that took the astronauts deeper into space than anyone had flown before.

Recovery teams were standing by to secure the floating capsule and retrieve the crew - U.S. astronauts Reid Wiseman, 50, Victor Glover, 49, and Christina Koch, 47, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, 50.

The Artemis II flight, traveling a total of 694,392 miles across two Earth orbits and a climactic lunar flyby some 252,000 miles away, was the debut crewed test flight in a series of Artemis missions that aim to start landing astronauts on the lunar surface starting in 2028.