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NASA's Artemis II crew returned to Earth on Friday after completing a nearly 10-day mission around the Moon, marking the first time astronauts have traveled to the Moon in more than half a century and setting a new distance record for human spaceflight.
Attention now shifts to preparations for Artemis III and future lunar landings using commercially built landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 5:07 p.m. PDT, or 8:07 p.m. EDT, aboard the Orion spacecraft, completing a mission that took them 252,756 miles from Earth at their farthest point and 694,481 miles in total.
The Artemis II crew returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on Friday.
After splashdown, the astronauts were met by a combined NASA and U.S. military team, which assisted them out of the spacecraft in open water and transported them by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for initial medical checkouts.
The crew members are expected to return to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday, April 11.
NASA said the mission marked the first time astronauts had traveled to the Moon in more than 50 years.
During the mission, Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen flew a total of 694,481 miles.
Their lunar flyby took them farther than any humans have traveled before, surpassing the previous record set by the Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.
At the farthest point of the mission, the crew was 252,756 miles from Earth.
NASA described Artemis II as a historic achievement and said it demonstrated the performance of the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System rocket, and the broader architecture of the Artemis program.
The Artemis II crew launched at 6:35 p.m. on April 1 from Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA said the Space Launch System rocket generated 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff and delivered the Orion spacecraft to orbit with pinpoint accuracy after what it described as a smooth countdown by the Artemis launch control team.
The Orion spacecraft used for the mission was named Integrity by the crew.
During the first day in space, astronauts and teams on the ground checked the spacecraft and confirmed that all systems were healthy ahead of the trip to the Moon.
NASA also deployed four CubeSats from international partners into Earth orbit.
On the second day of the mission, NASA said Orion's service module fired its main engine after all systems were confirmed ready.
That maneuver placed the astronauts on a trajectory that brought them to within 4,067 miles of the lunar surface at their closest approach.
NASA said the mission was the first time astronauts had flown aboard Orion and used the flight as a full in-flight evaluation of the spacecraft with humans on board.
NASA said engineers used the mission to test Orion's life support systems and confirm that the spacecraft can sustain humans in deep space.
The astronauts also took manual control of the spacecraft during several piloting demonstrations to validate Orion's handling and gather data for future rendezvous and docking operations involving human-rated lunar landers during Artemis III and later missions.
The crew also carried out a series of tests to inform future lunar missions, including evaluations related to crew exercise, emergency equipment and procedures, the Orion crew survival system spacesuits and other critical spacecraft systems.
NASA said Artemis II proved the vehicle, the teams, the architecture, and the international partnership behind the mission.
During the mission, the Artemis II astronauts supported scientific investigations meant to help NASA prepare astronauts to live and work on the Moon as the agency plans a lunar base and looks toward Mars.
NASA said the research included the AVATAR investigation, which studies how human tissue responds to microgravity and the deep space radiation environment, as well as other human research performance studies.
According to the agency, those experiments are collecting health data considered essential for long-duration missions.
NASA said Artemis II science is expected to help pave the way for future missions to the lunar surface by advancing mission operations and training astronauts to identify high-interest areas for science and exploration.
During the April 6 lunar flyby, the astronauts captured more than 7,000 images of the lunar surface and of a solar eclipse in which the Moon blocked the Sun from Orion's point of view.
NASA said the imagery included views of earthset and earthrise, impact craters, ancient lava flows, the Milky Way galaxy, and surface fractures and color variations across the Moon.
The astronauts also documented topography along the terminator, the boundary between lunar day and night, where low-angle sunlight casts long shadows across the surface.
NASA said those lighting conditions are similar to those in the South Pole region, where astronauts are scheduled to land in 2028.
The crew also proposed potential names for two lunar craters and reported meteoroid impact flashes on the night side of the Moon.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the mission and the future of Artemis were made possible by the mandate and resources provided by President Donald Trump and partners in Congress.
He said Artemis II showed extraordinary skill, courage and dedication as the crew pushed Orion, SLS and human exploration farther than ever before.
Isaacman said the astronauts accepted significant risk in service of the knowledge gained and the future NASA is determined to build.
He also said NASA was now turning its attention to assembling Artemis III and preparing to return to the lunar surface, build the base and not give up the Moon again.
NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said the entry, descent and landing systems performed as designed and that the final test was completed as intended.
He said the moment belonged to the thousands of people across 14 countries who built, tested and trusted the vehicle.
Kshatriya said Artemis II proved the architecture and international partnership that will return humanity to the lunar surface.
With Artemis II completed, NASA is now looking to the next phase of the program, which is to land astronauts on the Moon.
For that stage, the agency is relying on commercially built lunar landers from Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.
NASA hopes to send four people on a mission lasting several weeks and eventually build a lunar base, a more ambitious objective than the Apollo program, in which only two astronauts landed on the Moon for a maximum of a few days.
NASA officials said after Artemis II's splashdown that the entire industry needs to work together to achieve a crewed lunar landing in 2028.
Lori Glaze, the acting associate NASA administrator, said the production lines needed to meet that goal will require the entire industry to accept the challenge and move forward with NASA.
Unlike Apollo, which used the Saturn V rocket to carry both the astronauts and the lunar lander, NASA has adopted a two-system approach for Artemis.
Under that model, Orion carries the crew from Earth, while a separate privately contracted system launches the lunar lander.
Kent Chojnacki, a senior NASA official in charge of lunar lander development, said the decision was driven by the technical limitations of the Apollo approach, which he said was not expandable to long-term exploration and long-term stays.
Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at the Planetary Society, said that although Apollo was spectacular, those missions were like camping trips.
Chojnacki said the systems now being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX are much larger than those used in Apollo, ranging from two to seven times larger.
NASA is also drawing on international partners, including European companies that built Orion's propulsion module.
The more complex Artemis approach also brings major operational challenges.
To send the large lunar landers to the Moon, the private companies will need to master in-flight refueling, a complicated maneuver that has not yet been fully tested.
After the lunar lander is launched, additional rockets will be needed to deliver the fuel required for the journey to the Moon, about 250,000 miles, or 400,000 kilometers, from Earth.
Concerns remain about whether in-orbit refueling can be achieved on the required schedule.
Chojnacki said NASA does have a plan and also a backup plan in case of failure.
Pressure has increased in recent months because of the risky nature of the undertaking and delays, particularly those involving SpaceX, which had been expected to have its lander ready first.
Last September, three former NASA officials warned in a SpaceNews article that the United States was once again about to lose the Moon.
China's progress toward sending humans to the Moon by 2030 has also added pressure and raised fears in the Trump administration that the United States could fall behind.
NASA raised the possibility last fall of reopening the contract awarded to SpaceX and using Blue Origin's lunar lander first, sending shockwaves through the rival companies.
Both companies then said they were realigning their strategies to prioritize the lunar project and maintain their NASA contracts.
NASA says it plans to test an in-orbit rendezvous between the spacecraft and one or two lunar landers in 2027.
The agency is aiming to carry out a crewed lunar landing in 2028.
Before that can happen, companies will need to test in-orbit refueling and send an uncrewed lunar lander to the Moon to demonstrate that it is safe.
All of that must happen within the next two years.
Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that it feels like a very small amount of time.
NASA said Artemis astronauts will be sent on increasingly challenging missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery and economic benefits, establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface, and lay the groundwork for sending the first astronauts, specifically American astronauts, to Mars.
With Artemis II complete and its crew safely back on Earth, NASA and its partners are now shifting from a record-setting lunar flyby to the next phase of the program, which will test commercial landing systems and aim for a return to the Moon's surface in 2028.
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