Pacific Ocean off San Diego, April 11, 2026 — In a moment that will be remembered as one of the great achievements of 21st century space exploration, NASA’s Artemis II crew splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean on Friday evening, concluding a historic 10-day mission that took four astronauts around the Moon and back for the first time in over half a century. The successful return of the Orion spacecraft marks a triumphant milestone in humanity’s renewed ambition to return to the lunar surface and eventually send astronauts to Mars.
The four-person crew — NASA Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen — parachuted to a splashdown at 8:07 PM EDT (0007 UTC Saturday) off the coast of San Diego, California, where US Navy recovery teams were waiting to bring them home. The capsule’s re-entry, widely considered the most dangerous phase of the mission, went flawlessly.
NASA Administrator and agency leaders held an emotional post-splashdown press conference, calling the mission a validation of years of work by thousands of engineers, scientists, and technicians who rebuilt America’s deep-space human exploration infrastructure.