The four astronauts of the Artemis II mission returned to Earth on Friday night, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego aboard the Orion space capsule. All crew members are in good health, concluding a historic 10-day journey around the moon.
Nasa’s associate administrator Amit Kshatriya said at a press conference: “53 years ago, humanity left the moon. This time we return to stay.” The spacecraft touched down at 5.07pm Pacific time, having travelled 694,481 miles over nine days, one hour and 32 minutes. The mission is recorded as 10 days because launch day was counted as flight day one.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen became the first humans to travel to the moon and return safely since Apollo 17 in 1972. As Orion descended, Wiseman described the Earth: “There’s a great blue hue to it. It’s beautiful.”
Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman praised the crew as “absolutely professional astronauts, wonderful communicators, almost poets”. He added: “This is just the beginning. We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028.”
The mission provided stunning images of the lunar surface and Earth. Christina Koch described her first close approach: “I had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon... it became real.” Koch is now the only woman to have travelled to the moon and back.
