A formal welcoming ceremony was held in Houston to celebrate the team's successful completion of their 10-day journey into deep space and their safe return to Earth.
The Artemis II crew, consisting of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, returned to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston and received a grand welcome after their historic lunar orbit mission.
The Artemis II crew returns home after a historic 10-day mission around the Moon. (Source: NASA, FOX News)
The first crewed test flight of NASA's Artemis program lifted off from launch pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:35 AM on April 2, 2026 (Vietnam time). These are the first humans to travel to the vicinity of the Moon in over half a century.
During the nearly 10-day mission, the crew set impressive milestones: the furthest distance reached was 406,770 km from Earth, and the closest approach to the lunar surface was 6,545 km.
The Orion spacecraft landed precisely in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego, at 7:07 AM on April 11, 2026 (Vietnam time). After being rescued and undergoing initial medical assessments, all four crew members were flown to Houston. Upon landing on home soil, they shared emotional moments of reunion with family, friends, and colleagues at NASA.
Currently, the crew is beginning a physical recovery phase, undergoing intensive tests of human performance and participating in presentations analyzing the scientific data collected from this mission.