The four Artemis II astronauts returned to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday to cheers from hundreds of space center workers and family members, one day after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean to close out a nine-day mission around the moon.
Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen completed the first crewed flight to the moon and back since the Apollo program ended more than 50 years ago. The crew launched atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center on April 1 in an Orion capsule they named "Integrity," traveling a quarter of a million miles to the moon before returning to Earth.
"After a brief 53-year intermission, the show goes on, and NASA is back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon and bringing them home safely," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told the crowd gathered at Ellington Field near the space center.
The mission was not without its challenges. The flight was a test of both the rocket and the spacecraft, carrying real risks for the crew crammed into a capsule about the size of a minibus. Among the more unglamorous complications: the $23 million toilet system experienced plumbing problems, forcing the astronauts to resort to backup urine collection devices.
The crew spoke with visible emotion about the experience. Wiseman marveled that just 24 hours earlier he had been traveling at Mach 39 with Earth visible out the window. Koch described seeing the planet from lunar distance as "this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe," surrounded by vast blackness. Glover, who carried a Bible on the journey, thanked God publicly for the experience, saying "the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did and being with who I was with, it's too big to just be in one body."
The mission captivated a global audience, with BBC science correspondent Pallab Ghosh describing the launch as "a truly visceral experience" — the burning brightness, the deafening roar, and the sheer force of the blast passing through spectators at the Kennedy Space Center. Live video streamed from inside the capsule throughout the journey gave millions an intimate view of life in space, from the cramped quarters to the crew's first awestruck glimpses of Earth from deep space.