The Artemis II mission, a crewed test flight under NASA's Artemis program, is an approximately 10-day journey around the Moon including launch, a lunar flyby, and a safe splashdown off the coast of San Diego. The crew of Artemis II is set to return to Earth on Friday, April 10, 2026. This mission represents a significant step toward returning humans to the lunar surface and establishing a sustainable presence there.
The Orion capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California. The splashdown is scheduled for around 8:07 p.m. EDT (5:07 p.m. PT) on Friday, April 10, 2026. The return will see the Orion capsule traveling at nearly 24,000 mph before making a final splashdown. The splashdown will occur far off the southern California coast and not be visible from California, with a large exclusion zone and debris expected. The location and time of splashdown will continue to shift as mission milestones are reached.
The USS John P. Murtha is ready to assist with recovery operations, expected to take between an hour and an hour and a half. Following splashdown, recovery teams will retrieve the crew using helicopters and deliver them to the USS John P. Murtha. Once aboard the USS John P. Murtha, the astronauts will undergo post-mission medical evaluations in the ship's medical bay before traveling back to shore to meet with an aircraft bound for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The astronauts are configuring the Orion capsule for re-entry, stowing equipment, securing cargo, and adjusting crew seats. The crew is reviewing updated weather briefings, recovery forces status, entry timeline, and post-landing procedures.
Orion's thrusters are scheduled to ignite for the second return trajectory correction burn at 9:53 p.m. EDT to fine-tune the spacecraft's path toward Earth. The crew is expected to travel a total of 695,081 miles from launch to splashdown. The spacecraft will pass within 4,066 miles of the lunar surface during its closest approach. The spacecraft will reach a maximum distance of 252,757 miles from Earth, about 4,102 miles farther than Apollo 13. The Artemis II mission's spacecraft, Orion, broke the record for human travel at about 13:56 EDT (18:56 BST) on Monday, beating a record of 248,655 miles (400,000 km) held since 1970 by the Apollo 13 mission.
The mission is testing how the spacecraft's systems operate in a deep space environment. Artemis II astronauts are putting the Orion spacecraft through a series of planned tests to evaluate systems, procedures, and performance in deep space. They will conduct manual spacecraft operations and monitor automated activities; evaluate Orion's life-support, propulsion, and other systems.
The crew lost contact with Earth, as expected, for 40 minutes as they traveled behind the Moon. Soon afterwards the spacecraft dipped to within a few thousand miles of the lunar surface. The crew witnessed a total eclipse of the Sun as the Moon blocked out its light. As the spacecraft approached and the Moon swelled in its windows, the astronauts began working through a checklist of things to record on its surface. The astronauts took images with an array of digital cameras and, as NASA had briefed, made sketches and recorded their own audio descriptions of what they saw.
The spacecraft was not planning to land on the Moon but fly around its far side, the side which is never visible from Earth. Satellites have photographed the far side before, but the astronauts were the first human eyes to see some parts of the far side's surface and its vast craters and lava plains.
President Trump asked the four astronauts what the most unforgettable part of their day had been. Fellow astronaut Jeremy Hansen made a request to NASA mission control to name two craters they observed on the Moon both with their naked eye and with their long lens. One crater they asked to be called Integrity - the name the astronauts gave to the Orion capsule they are traveling in. The other request was to commemorate Wiseman's late wife Carroll, who died in 2020 of cancer. The four astronauts were seen hugging on the live feed from their capsule after the request.
The crew lifted off at 6:35 p.m. EDT on April 1 from launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The location and time of splashdown will continue to shift as mission milestones are reached.
The crew's kit included two professional digital SLR cameras – one fitted with a wide-angle lens. Real-time coverage continues throughout the mission on NASA's YouTube channel. NASA provides a separate live stream of views from the Orion spacecraft as bandwidth allows, as well as inside the capsule. Daily mission status briefings are held live from Johnson Space Center in Houston through splashdown, except for Monday, April 6, due to lunar flyby activities. The crew are participating in live conversations throughout the mission, which were scheduled prior to their departure from Earth.
NASA will provide the exact times of downlink events and the latest mission coverage on the Artemis blog. Updates on splashdown will be available on NASA's website and in daily news conferences.
The astronauts on Orion are returning to Earth with useful experiences for future space travel. This mission serves as a critical precursor to Artemis III, which aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface. The data collected will inform the design and execution of subsequent missions, including those targeting the Moon's south pole.
However, specific technical issues or anomalies encountered during the mission, which could impact future Artemis missions, have not been publicly detailed. The exact coordinates of the splashdown location in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego also remain unspecified.
Post-mission scientific data or samples being brought back by the crew for analysis have not been disclosed. Detailed results of the systems tests conducted during the mission, and how they compare to pre-flight expectations, are yet to be released. Specific plans NASA has for the next Artemis mission (Artemis III) following the success or lessons learned from Artemis II are still under development.