Science and Space Policy

The four-person Artemis II crew — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — completed a historic lunar flyby and Pacific splashdown in early April 2026 after launching from Kennedy Space Center. Liftoff on the Space Launch System and Orion capsule Integrity occurred on April 1 following a 24-hour high, highly elliptical checkout orbit; a translunar injection burn of roughly 5 minutes 50 seconds sent Orion on a free-return, figure-eight trajectory that carried the spacecraft to a maximum distance of about 252,756 miles from Earth and as close as roughly 4,067 miles above the lunar surface during a roughly seven-hour far-side pass. The mission, which NASA framed as a roughly nine- to ten-day dress rehearsal to validate Orion's environmental control and life-support systems, concluded with an atmospheric entry at roughly 25,000 mph, peak exterior heating near 5,000°F and a parachute-assisted splashdown about 60 miles off San Diego on April 10; recovery was led by U.S. Navy teams aboard USS John P. Murtha.