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Space
The Artemis II astronauts concluded their record-breaking 10-day journey on Friday with a smooth splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
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April 11, 2026, 6:30 AM EDT
NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight around the moon in more than 50 years, has been a feast for the eyes.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen concluded their 10-day mission Friday evening with a splash-down landing in the Pacific Ocean.
The crew launched April 1 on the 10-day journey, which took them around the far side of the moon. They traveled farther from Earth than any humans had before, breaking the distance record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970.
NASA’s Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.John Kraus / NASA
Their photos from the lunar flyby on Monday — when they saw parts of the moon that no humans had ever viewed with their own eyes — have captivated public attention.
NASA plans to release many more images from the mission now that the crew can hand over their data, rather than beaming it back from space. But for now, here are some of the best photos from Artemis II.
From left to right: Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of CSA, pilot Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialist Christina Koch walk out ahead of the launch on April 1.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
The mission launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Artemis II crew were the first people that NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket had ever carried into space.
Artemis II was one of the most highly anticipated space events in recent years, since it was the first time people have launched toward the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The Artemis II mission lifts off at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images
NASA
The launch was delayed several times earlier this year for rocket repairs, but when the day finally arrived, local officials in central Florida’s “Space Coast” estimated that hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the area to watch Artemis II lift off.
NASA/Getty Images
Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images
Two solid rocket boosters separate and fall toward Earth.Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images
Although Wiseman, Koch, Glover and Hansen did not land on the lunar surface, their mission was designed to test the rocket and capsule ahead of a planned moon landing in 2028. After that, NASA hopes to build a base on the moon and establish a long-term presence there.
On the second day of the flight, the Orion capsule performed a key engine burn to put it on a path toward the moon. The maneuver, known as a translunar injection burn, boosted the spacecraft’s velocity enough to send it out of Earth orbit.
NASA
The astronauts then spent three days journeying to the moon. Early on Monday, their Orion capsule entered a region of space known as the lunar sphere of influence, where the moon’s gravitational pull is stronger than the pull of Earth’s.
Before going to sleep on day five of the mission, the Artemis II crew snapped a photo of the moon as it drew close in the window of the Orion spacecraft.NASA
The most anticipated moment of the mission came on Monday, when the crew spent seven hours taking close-up photos of the lunar surface and observing specific sites on the moon, including impact craters, ridges and vast volcanic plains.
During their flyby around the moon’s far side, the astronauts reached a distance of 252,756 miles from Earth, which was more than 4,100 miles farther than the Apollo 13 record.
Astronaut Christina Koch is illuminated by a screen inside the darkened Orion spacecraft on the third day of the agency’s Artemis II mission.NASA
One of the first photos from the flyby released publicly showed the Artemis II crew’s view of “Earthset,” as Earth disappeared out of view behind the moon.
The photo was a nod to the iconic “Earthrise” image taken during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, when astronauts Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell circumnavigated the moon. That archival image, however, captured Earth reemerging beyond the edge of the moon, rather than dipping below it.
NASA
Other photos showed surprisingly rugged topography along the moon’s terminator, the dividing line between its illuminated side and the side cloaked in darkness.
“There’s just so much magic in the terminator — the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes,” Glover radioed to Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “You’d fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those. It’s just so visually captivating.”
The astronauts focused some of their observations on Orientale basin, a nearly 600-mile-wide crater that straddles the moon’s near and far sides. The 3.8-billion-year-old basin was formed when a large object smacked into the moon’s surface.
The crew’s high-resolution photos of features in and around the moon’s impact craters could help scientists understand how the moon formed and how its topography changed over time.
The sunlit Orion spacecraft near the moon. The Orientale basin, a 600-mile-wide, mountain-ringed crater, sits on the moon’s lower half.NASA
The astronauts even captured dramatic images of the moon’s crater-filled south polar region, where NASA is interested in landing astronauts on future Artemis missions.
The moon’s south pole is pockmarked with craters that are thought to be filled with water ice. But the area is significantly more challenging to navigate than those near the moon’s equator, where the Apollo astronauts touched down. NASA has said observations during the Artemis II mission could be used to pinpoint possible landing sites for missions to come.
Toward the end of their lunar flyby, the astronauts became the first to witness a solar eclipse from space. They made detailed observations over the course of about an hour, as the sun slipped behind the moon and reemerged again on the other side.
During the early stages of the eclipse, the astronauts had to don special glasses (much like the ones worn by people on Earth to view solar eclipses) to protect their eyes until the sun’s light was fully blocked by the moon.
The Artemis II crew uses eclipse viewers to protect their eyes at key moments during the solar eclipse during their lunar flyby.NASA
The eclipse photos show a darkened moon with the sun’s outermost atmosphere, the corona, glowing around the edges. In one of the images, bright points of light are visible around the edges of the moon. Those spots turned out to be planets, including Saturn, Mars and Venus.
Wiseman called the eclipse “an absolutely spectacular, magnificent experience.”
During the eclipse, as the moon was cloaked in darkness, the crew members spotted flashes of light from meteoroids smacking into the lunar surface.
The moon, backlit by the sun, and the Orion spacecraft, left, on Monday.NASA
While this phenomenon is rarely seen, such impacts are common on the moon because it lacks an atmosphere to protect it from incoming debris. Studying these cosmic crashes can help scientists understand the moon’s evolutionary history.
Kelsey Young, the Artemis II lunar science lead, said members of the mission’s science team were “jumping up and down literally” after the crew reported seeing six impact flashes.
After the flyby, the astronauts began their three-day journey home to Earth. By Tuesday afternoon, the Orion capsule exited the lunar sphere of influence.
During its high-stakes re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, the Orion capsule faced extreme temperatures nearing 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
NASA’s Orion spacecraft lands in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Friday.Bill Ingalls / NASA via Getty Images
After a fiery plunge through the atmosphere, the capsule deployed its parachutes, then splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.
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