The Artemis II mission ended in a dramatic fashion on April 10, 2026, when NASA's Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of San Diego, closing out humanity's first crewed journey to the moon in over 50 years.

The four-person crew — consisting of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — returned to Earth after a 10-day mission that tested the systems NASA plans to use for future lunar expeditions. NASA said the splashdown occurred at 8:07 p.m. EDT or 5:07 PST, with recovery operations led by the US Navy's USS John P. Murtha.

An extreme homecoming
Re-entry tends to be one of the more dramatic and dangerous parts of a mission, especially for Artemis II.

Unlike return missions from the International Space Station, which begin in low Earth orbit and thus don't need nearly as much speed to return to Earth, Artemis II flew back into Earth's atmosphere from the moon at near-record-breaking speeds. Orion came back at roughly 24,600 mph (39,600 kmh), around 24 times the speed of a bullet. That faster speed meant that the capsule's heat shield endured around twice the amount of heat as a spacecraft coming back from the ISS.