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OFF THE COAST OF SAN DIEGO — After a 10-day, 620,000-mile journey that shattered records held since the Apollo era, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean Friday evening, capping the first crewed voyage to the vicinity of the Moon in more than five decades and keeping the United States on track to return humans to the lunar surface by 2028.

The Orion spacecraft pierced Earth’s atmosphere at more than 24,000 miles per hour — faster than any returning crewed vehicle since Apollo 17 in 1972 — before deploying its parachutes and touching down in the Pacific near San Diego at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time. Mission Control in Houston called it “a perfect bullseye splashdown.” Within minutes, U.S. Navy recovery teams aboard the USS John P. Murtha were at the capsule.

A Crew That Made History

The Artemis II crew — NASA commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen — became the first human beings to travel beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17. Along the way, they broke the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970, reaching a point 252,756 miles from Earth on the far side of the Moon.

Glover is the first Black astronaut to journey to the Moon. Koch is the first woman. Hansen is the first non-American. Each of those historic firsts was accomplished on a single mission that will be studied by future generations as a turning point for NASA’s return to deep-space exploration.

“We just saw something that humanity has not seen in more than 50 years,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters at a post-splashdown news conference. “Four astronauts, around the Moon, home safely. The Artemis generation is no longer a promise. It is a reality.”

A Flawless Mission

Artemis II launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 1 atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful vehicle ever flown by the American space program. Over the following nine days, the crew conducted a free-return trajectory around the Moon, testing the Orion spacecraft’s life support, communications, navigation and reentry systems in the deep-space environment that will be required for the Artemis III lunar landing mission.

At nearly every milestone, flight controllers reported that the spacecraft was performing at or above specification. The heat shield — the single most critical component during reentry, where temperatures soar to nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit — performed flawlessly after NASA engineers spent years redesigning it following unexpected charring observed during the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022.

“Everything we tested, everything we stressed, the vehicle handled,” Wiseman said in the first post-recovery interview from aboard the Murtha. “There is nothing between us and landing on the Moon now.”

The First Photos Of The Far Side

Among the mission’s most striking deliverables were a series of photographs captured by the crew of the far side of the Moon — the first such images taken by human eyes and human cameras since Apollo. NASA released a selection of the photos during the flight, and the agency has said a fuller archive will be made public in the coming weeks.

The images show the battered, cratered far-side terrain in unprecedented detail and clarity, and scientists say they will help refine landing site selection for Artemis III and future lunar surface missions. Several of the photos quickly went viral on social media, with viewers marveling at the stark contrast between the illuminated lunar surface and the infinite black of deep space.

The Road To Artemis III

With Artemis II now in the books, NASA’s attention turns immediately to Artemis III, which is currently targeted for a 2028 launch and will carry the first woman and the first person of color to walk on the lunar surface. The mission will make use of a SpaceX Starship human landing system, a separate vehicle that will rendezvous with Orion in lunar orbit before ferrying astronauts down to the Moon’s south pole.

Starship’s uncrewed lunar demonstration is still ahead of schedule, NASA officials have said, though independent analysts continue to raise questions about the tight timeline. Still, the Artemis II success gives the program momentum that has been in short supply in recent years.

What It Means For Americans

For a country that has watched a revived space race unfold against the backdrop of growing Chinese ambitions — Beijing has announced its own plans to land taikonauts on the Moon before 2030 — Artemis II is more than just a scientific achievement. It is a geopolitical statement about American technological leadership at a moment when that leadership is being tested in nearly every arena from artificial intelligence to advanced manufacturing.

It is also, unmistakably, a moment of national celebration. Crowds gathered Friday night on beaches from San Diego to La Jolla to watch the distant silhouette of the recovery ship, and images of the capsule bobbing in the Pacific dominated cable news coverage through the evening. President Donald Trump congratulated the crew in a social media post, calling the mission “a GREAT day for America and for the brave astronauts who made us all so proud.”

For the four astronauts aboard Orion, the immediate future holds medical examinations, debriefings, and a long-awaited reunion with their families. For NASA — and for the American public that funds it — the mission marks the beginning of a new chapter in human spaceflight, one in which the Moon is no longer a Cold War-era memory but a place where humans are once again preparing to walk.

As Koch put it in a brief statement after splashdown: “We went. We came home. Next time, we stay.”