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The Artemis II astronauts are preparing to return to Earth, promising “many more pictures” and “many more stories” from their historic journey around the Moon.

The four crew members aboard the Orion spacecraft have completed their lunar flyby and are expected to splash down off the coast of San Diego around 8:00 p.m. Friday US Eastern Time (midnight GMT).

Speaking to reporters from space, mission pilot Victor Glover said the team was eager to share the results of their mission.

This marked the first public update from the crew since their record-breaking lunar flight, which took them farther from Earth than any humans in history.

Asked about the upcoming re-entry during Wednesday evening’s conference, Glover said, “We have to get back. There's so much data that you've already seen, but all the good stuff is coming back with us.”

“There’s so many more pictures, so many more stories,” he added. The pilot noted the crew still had “two more days” to fully process the experience.

“I’m going to be thinking about and talking about all of these things for the rest of my life,” Glover said.

The Artemis II mission set a new distance record for human spaceflight at approximately 1:56 p.m. EDT (6:56 p.m. BST) Monday, surpassing the 248,655-mile (400,000 km) mark set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

While Orion did not land on the Moon, it circled its far side—the portion never visible from Earth. Though satellites have photographed the area, the astronauts became the first humans to see parts of the far side’s surface and its expansive craters and lava plains.

Following the flyby, former President Donald Trump congratulated the crew, saying, “Today, you've made history and made all America really proud, incredibly proud.”

During a recent virtual news conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the astronauts answered questions in a live stream, speaking through a floating microphone and contending with communication delays.

The Los Angeles Times asked about 40 minutes of “profound solitude” when the crew lost contact with Earth. Commander Reid Wiseman described focusing on their scientific tasks as “probably the most critical lunar observations for our geology team.”

“But the four of us took a moment, we shared maple cookies that Jeremy had brought, and we took about three or four minutes, just as a crew to really reflect on where we were,” Wiseman said.

For Glover, the “greatest gift” of the mission was witnessing a lunar eclipse from beyond the Moon’s far side.

Wiseman described the “pinnacle moment” as naming a lunar crater after his late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

“I think when Jeremy spelled Carroll's name … I think for me that is when I was overwhelmed with emotion and I looked over and Christina was crying,” he said. “Just for me personally, that was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission for me.”

The crew relied on family members to follow news from Earth. “They’ve been our source of how the mission is going from the public perspective,” Wiseman said, adding, “obviously they're all biased.”

When asked what she will miss most about space, Christina Koch said it would be the “camaraderie.” Asked what she won’t miss, she replied there was “nothing.”

“We can't explore deeper unless we are doing a few things that are inconvenient, unless we're making a few sacrifices, unless we're taking a few risks. And those things are all worth it,” Koch said.

The astronauts now face several quieter days of experiments and system checks before the final challenge: a fiery re-entry at nearly 25,000 mph, followed by a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific, testing Orion’s heatshield and recovery systems.