Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. If you have not yet become familiar with these names, do so soon, because by now they are already in history. We’re talking about the first astronauts to fly over the moon in more than half a century, who officially returned to Earth in the last few hours after NASA’s Artemis II test flight mission. The crew ditched in the Italian night, at 5:07 p.m. PDT on Friday, April 10, 2026, off the coast of San Diego. It was a spectacular arrival, like pretty much the entire journey that has held the world in suspense for the past few days.
The specialized NASA team, with a member from the Canadian space agency, completed a journey that started last April 1 and lasted nearly 10 days. A historic mission 252,756 miles long from home, at the greatest distance from Earth ever achieved in recent history. As NASA’s website states, “After ditching in the Pacific Ocean, the astronauts were met by a joint NASA and U.S. military team that helped them exit the spacecraft into the open ocean and transported them by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for initial medical checks. The crew members are scheduled to return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday, April 11.”
It is the first trip in half a century of humans flying over the moon, representing an achievement but also, and more importantly, a starting point toward future planned sensational missions. Because NASA specifies that “Artemis II’s scientific research will pave the way for future missions to the lunar surface, helping to improve mission operations and train astronauts to use sound judgment to identify areas of greatest interest for science and exploration.” And credit is certainly due to the crew of this technically flawless mission, which helped gather valuable information that will be useful in “preparing for next year’s Artemis III mission, when a new Orion crew will test integrated operations with lunar landing modules built by private companies in low Earth orbit.”
[📸 © NASA / Josh Valcarcel]
