What we covered here
• Artemis II returns home: The astronauts successfully splashed down off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. ET as planned, concluding a monumental and risky 10-day journey around the moon and back that took them farther from Earth than anyone in human history.
• What happens next: NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were taken to the recovery ship, where they’ll get medical checks. NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston erupted in cheers and applause as the astronauts were retrieved from the Orion capsule.
• Crew status: “What a journey. We are stable. Four green crewmembers,” Wiseman said, indicating all four astronauts are in good shape.
• A step toward the future: Declared a “mission well accomplished,” Artemis II has opened a path to return to the surface of the moon with future missions, NASA officials say.
Our live coverage of Artemis II’s return to Earth has ended. Look back at the mission in the photo gallery here.
The Artemis astronauts will return to Houston on Saturday
After being in microgravity during their 10-day mission, the crew will undergo medical evaluations, complete an “obstacle course” test to see how well they reacclimate to Earth’s gravity and fly to Houston to be reunited with their families.
The crew is expected to arrive at Ellington Field between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET on Saturday. The latest guidance from NASA was that an event would begin at 4:45 p.m. ET. But that time could change. Reporters from CNN will be standing by, awaiting their arrival.
Here's what's next for Artemis mission managers
Mission managers beamed as they reflected on this historic milestone, and the commendable performance of the vehicle that carried NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen around the moon.
But this was a test flight, and things weren’t perfect.
During the post-splashdown news conference, mission managers recapped several pieces of the mission that will need close inspection. In addition to the heat shield, the Orion capsule’s service module will need a valve redesign. The toilet issue needs to be worked out. And there’s not much time to sort it.
Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, acknowledged that teams have a tight turnaround for Artemis III — which is slated for next year — and the space agency is learning to move quicker.
NASA will check out Orion's heat shield
It was perhaps the most sensitive and concerning stretch of the mission: Orion came blaring back into Earth’s atmosphere with a heat shield that has a known flaw.
All was well. The capsule splashed down in the ocean with no obvious issues.
But mission managers were expecting the shield, which is made of an ablative material called Avcoat, to return with divots and signs of cracking — which is not ideal. NASA plans to alter that material for future missions to avoid such issues entirely, but the performance of the Artemis II heat shield is crucial to helping engineers glean a more holistic understanding of the Avcoat, which has been used since the Apollo era.
Inspection of the hardware has already begun. Orion program manager Howard Hu said aircraft that tracked the capsule as it blazed through the sky gathered the first imagery and data about its performance.
Divers were also positioned on recovery ships, and they plunged into the Pacific to photograph the heat shield shortly after splashdown.
After that, Hu said, the capsule will be transported back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where engineers will have the opportunity take detailed scans of the heat shield.
“We will in the next several days make sure we understand if there’s anything that happened that was anomalous,” Hu said. “But we’re very excited. The team is very excited to get that data from both the imagery and seeing it live in person.”
Everyone has a different favorite part of the mission
NASA officials were asked to name their favorite moments from the Artemis II mission during a post-splashdown news conference.
Shawn Quinn, manager of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, named launch day and watching the rocket rise off the pad as his.
“You know, for me, the greatest moment was the parachutes, the main chutes deploying,” said Howard Hu, NASA’s Orion program manager. “I think seeing that, I was chanting, ‘go, go, go’ by myself. That was just a tremendous moment. Objective No. 1 is ‘get the crew home.’”
Rick Henfling, entry flight director, chose the crew’s naming of the two craters on the lunar surface, including one for Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, as his top moment.
Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, picked two: when Wiseman reported “four crew green” after splashdown to indicate they were in good shape and watching NASA astronaut Christina Koch as the first to emerge from the capsule.
Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator, closed with, “It’ll be tomorrow when I see my friends again,” referring to the crew.
Orion program manager hopes kids who love the stars will be inspired by Artemis II
As a kid, Howard Hu, NASA’s Orion program manager, loved the “Star Wars” films and watching them with his dad.
Today was thousands of times better than “Star Wars,” Hu said, although he wishes his dad were still alive to see a mission that sent humans farther into space than ever before. As a kid who was inspired by the stars, Hu shared his wishes for any kids who have followed the mission.
Artemis II's stunning final stats are in
The final numbers for Artemis II’s mission are in, courtesy of NASA’s Flight Dynamics team, and the stats are mind-boggling.
“Integrity and her crew of four astronauts flew 700,237 miles, we reached a peak velocity of 24,664 miles per hour, we hit our flight path angle target within 0.4%, we flew an entry range of 1,957 miles, and we landed within less than a mile of our target,” said Rick Henfling, entry flight director in a post-splashdown news conference.
Artemis II's unprecedented human experiment is just beginning
Before four Artemis II astronauts strapped into their Orion capsule to soar toward the moon, a tiny bit of each of them was already on board.
Incubated in a small triangular container stowed on the spacecraft just before launch were four USB-size “avatars,” which rode along with the history-making moon mission. But in many ways, their journey is just beginning.
Known as organ chips, the avatar crewmates are made with bone marrow tissue derived from cells donated by their full-size counterparts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — and researchers believe the experiment could soon unlock unprecedented insights about the effects of space on human health.
The AVATAR, or A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response, study essentially allows scientists to simulate what happens to astronauts’ organs in deep space.
It’s one of several experiments on Orion that can evaluate how astronauts respond to the five hazards of spaceflight — and lay the groundwork for future missions.
After splashdown, the astronauts have to complete this obstacle course
It’s not all fun and games when readjusting to life with gravity.
Some astronauts experience a rough bout of space adaptation sickness, making it difficult to reacclimate to life on the ground, said Jason Norcross, a lead scientist for NASA’s Human Health and Countermeasures Element in the Human Research Program (HRP).
Fortunately, the Artemis II astronauts have only been in space 10 days. Regaining Earth legs shouldn’t be too big of an issue. But NASA does want to gather data about what they will and won’t be capable of doing immediately upon return.
Enter an obstacle course.
Norcross’ team devised some postflight tests that the astronauts will go through amid their health checks after splashdown. Within one to four hours after returning to Earth, the crew will complete a brief trial that involves climbing a ladder and simulating what it would be like to make an emergency exit from a space capsule. It’s all just a test to gain data — but it will help NASA understand what future astronauts are and aren’t capable of immediately upon returning from a mission like this.
The crew ran through the test before launch as well, completing it in a minute or so. Norcross said other astronauts who have completed the test after returning from monthslong stays on the International Space Station still get the test run done in roughly 90 seconds.
Relive what a day in the life of the Artemis II astronauts looked like:
From exercising using gym equipment that’s smaller than a carry-on, to trying to avoid zero-gravity crumbs and sleeping in suspended sleeping bags, all within a space capsule the size of two minivans, CNN looks into life on the Artemis II space mission.
Crew was 'having a good time' inside the capsule
Before we caught any glimpses of the Artemis II crew after splashdown, Liliana Villarreal, NASA Artemis II landing and recovery director, saw video of them inside the capsule and said astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen were already out of their seats and having a good time while waiting for the recovery crews to reach them.
“Everybody was doing very well, and they were just having such a great time with the medical team that was inside the capsule. I think they were all taking selfies,” Villarreal said. “And then we put them on the front porch and again, you could see they were just so ecstatic to be home and talking to everybody.”
Photos: Cheering crowds watch the landing across California
Across California, people gathered to watch live as the Artemis II mission’s astronauts hurtled back to Earth aboard the Orion capsule on Friday evening. Upon their safe landing, cheers broke out in earnest.
The astronauts are on the recovery vessel. Now what?
The astronauts are now on board the USS John P. Murtha recovery vessel. Here’s what will happen next.
- Following medical evaluations, the astronauts will depart the ship by air to San Diego.
- The astronauts have a choice. They can choose to sleep on the ship or at a hotel in San Diego Friday night, or head directly from San Diego to Houston, where their families will be.
- The recovery of the Orion spacecraft can take several additional hours, often 4 to 6 hours after splashdown, and sometimes longer.
Astronauts share broad smiles aboard the recovery ship
All four astronauts are on board the recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha. Victor Glover and Christina Koch can be seen sitting side by side in their helicopter, which landed on the ship’s flight deck.
They appear to be in jovial spirits, sharing laughs, smiles and waves. NASA chief Jared Isaacman also approach to give them each a hug.
Jeremy Hansen could also be seen walking across the deck — a sign he’s recovering quickly from life in microgravity.
NASA official: "We made a big step tonight"
NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said that the success of the Artemis II mission is paving the path to future exploration opportunities.
“We made a big step tonight to get us on the path towards the surface,” he said. “I think the path of the surface is open now.”
Kshatriya reflected on the last time humans ventured to the vicinity of the moon with Apollo 17 and how the Apollo program lost momentum afterward. But he noted how NASA kept moving forward.
The astronauts are on the Navy recovery ship
All four astronauts are now onboard the Navy recovery ship after traveling via helicopters, where they will receive a medical evaluation. Helicopters were chosen because they are much quicker than transporting the crew via boat. There are 550 people onboard the ship to welcome them.
What does the Orion capsule smell like? Probably stinky, former astronauts say
The Artemis II crew is back on Earth and getting pulled out of the Orion capsule — which might have a bit of a stinky smell, according to former astronauts.
After 10 days in space, the inside of the spacecraft could smell “like a locker room,” former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman said, describing from his past experience the whiff he got when they opened the hatch of a spacecraft at the International Space Station.
Mike Massimino, another former NASA astronaut, said the expression of the crew extracting them from their space shuttle said everything: “When they open that hatch, they’re like, ‘Wow.’”
But luckily for the astronauts — many whom are on the International Space Station much longer than the little more than a week the Artemis II crew was in their capsule — they don’t really notice the smell.
In space, there is a fluid shift in the body “where your head gets all puffy and it feels like you’re congested and that dulls your sense of smell,” Reisman said.
That science fact “might be a real blessing because it might really reek up on that space station and none of us know,” he said.
Commander Reid Wiseman is the last to exit the spacecraft
All four astronauts have emerged from their home of 10 days — the Orion spacecraft — and are aboard the inflatable “front porch” raft. Reid Wiseman, the Artemis II mission commander, was the last to exit the vehicle.
Raucous cheers could be heard from Mission Control in Houston, where the floor is crowded with NASA employees celebrating this historic milestone.
The astronauts are emerging from Orion
Video credit: NASA
The first couple of astronauts have climbed from Orion onto the capsule’s post-splashdown front porch — an inflatable raft. They’ll now prepare to be shuttled via air from the raft to the recovery ship, where they’ll get medical checks.
Mission Control in Houston erupted in cheers and applause as they saw the crew members exiting the capsule.
Canadian Space Agency and prime minister welcome home Jeremy Hansen
The Canadian Space Agency and Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed home one of their own who was on the Artemis II mission, Jeremy Hansen.
“Jeremy Hansen and the Artemis II crew are back on Earth after becoming the first humans in over 50 years to venture to the Moon. Welcome home, Jeremy!” the agency said in a post on X.
Hansen, a fighter pilot, is the first non-NASA astronaut to join a lunar mission.
Carney congratulated Hansen “and the team on an historic feat. Welcome home,” according to an X post.
Trump congratulates Artemis II crew and says he’ll see them at the White House “soon”
President Donald Trump congratulated the astronauts of the Artemis II mission in a post tonight, inviting the crew to visit the White House soon.
The president, who spent this evening at a political fundraiser in Virginia, watched the Artemis II splashdown live on TV from Trump Winery in Charlottesville, according to a White House official.
The president also spoke with the Artemis crew by phone after the lunar flyby Monday.
