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"Artemis II": Successful landing after record flight around the moon

13-4-2026

Translation: machine translated

The NASA crew reaches a greater distance from Earth than ever before on their flight. After the safe splashdown, engineers analyse the data and prepare for man's return to the lunar surface.

After a good ten days in space, «Artemis II» is back where the mission began: on Earth. On the night of 11 April 2026 Central European Time, the Orion capsule from NASA splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California as planned. The first manned journey to the moon since Apollo 17 thus ended successfully and provided important data for the next phase of the Artemis programme.

You can read about how this came about in the first place, why «Artemis II» was a deliberate intermediate step without a moon landing and what role the crew played in the previous article. This article adds the latest information on the landing.

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NASA mission "Artemis II": first manned journey to the moon in over 50 years
by Kim Muntinga

The most critical moment of the mission

The landing - technically known as the splashdown - is the most dangerous part of every Orion mission. During re-entry, the capsule hits the atmosphere at almost 40,000 kilometres per hour. This generates temperatures of up to 2700 degrees Celsius. During this phase, there is radio silence for around six minutes.

The resulting plasma interrupted communication for several minutes until the brake parachutes and three main parachutes opened in several stages. US Navy recovery teams picked up the crew - Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen - shortly after the ship splashed down aboard the USS John P. Murtha.

The flight at a glance

The mission lasted just under ten days and set a new record: The crew reached a distance of 406,771 kilometres from Earth. This exceeded the previous record of the Apollo 13 mission by around 6550 kilometres. During their flyby on the far side of the moon, the astronauts also captured breathtaking images, including the so-called «Earthset», in which the blue Earth disappears behind the grey lunar horizon.

On the sixth day of the flight, 6 April, the crew orbited the far side of the moon. Pilot Victor Glover called the solar eclipse, when the moon covered the sun, the personal highlight of the mission: the crew also discovered unknown craters and documented lava flows and cracks on the moon's surface.

My colleague Samuel has already compiled the most impressive images from this mission for you:

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The most beautiful pictures of Artemis II
by Samuel Buchmann

The next steps to the south pole of the moon

While the crew undergoes medical examinations and recovers in Houston, engineers analyse extensive data. According to initial reports, the Orion capsule's systems worked largely autonomously and reliably. This is the key requirement for «Artemis III».

This mission is intended to bring humans back to the surface of the moon for the first time in decades and is currently planned for 2027 at the earliest.

Header image: Joel Kowsky / NASA

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