The journey of Artemis 2

• Four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis-II mission splashed down in the Pacific ocean after a historic flight to the Moon on April 11.

• NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen splashed down off the coast of San Diego, completing a nearly 10-day journey.

• It was NASA’s first crewed lunar flyby in over 50 years.

• During their mission, Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen flew 694,481 miles (1,117,659 km) in total. 

• Their lunar flyby took them farther than any humans have ever travelled before, surpassing the previous distance record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.

• After splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the astronauts were met by a combined NASA and US military team that assisted them out of the spacecraft in open water and transported them via helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for initial medical checkouts. 

The journey of Artemis 2

• The Artemis 2 mission was launched on April 1, from Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

• With 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket propelled the crew inside the Orion spacecraft to space, delivering it to orbit with pinpoint accuracy after a smooth countdown conducted by the agency’s Artemis launch control team.

• During the first day in space, the astronauts and teams on the ground checked out the spacecraft — named Integrity by the crew — to confirm all systems were healthy ahead of the transit to the Moon. NASA also deployed four CubeSats from international partners to Earth orbit.

• On the second day of the flight, Orion’s service module fired its main engine, placing the astronauts on a trajectory that brought them 4,067 miles (6,545 km) above the lunar surface at their closest approach.

• During their April 6 lunar flyby, the astronauts captured more than 7,000 images of the lunar surface and a solar eclipse, during which the Moon blocked the Sun from Orion’s vantage point. 

• The imagery includes striking views of earthset and earthrise, impact craters, ancient lava flows, our Milky Way galaxy, and surface fractures and colour variations across the lunar terrain.

• They documented the topography along the terminator — the boundary between lunar day and night — where low-angle sunlight casts long shadows across the surface, creating illumination conditions 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.

• The crew completed a series of tests to inform how NASA will fly future missions to the Moon, including evaluations of how the spacecraft operates during crew exercise, emergency equipment and procedures, the Orion crew survival system spacesuits, and other critical spacecraft systems.

• They also supported scientific investigations to help NASA prepare astronauts to live and work on the Moon as the agency builds a Moon Base and looks toward Mars. 

• Artemis 2 science will pave the way for future missions to the Moon’s surface by helping advance mission operations and training astronauts to use well-informed judgment to identify areas of high interest for science and exploration.

• With the crew safely on Earth, NASA and its partners now will turn attention to preparing for next year’s Artemis 3 mission, when a new Orion crew will test integrated operations with commercially built Moon landers in Low Earth orbit.