Four astronauts are preparing for a perilous return through Earth's atmosphere to make a splashdown near California and put the finishing touches on a moon-circling mission that will etch their names in history.
NASA's Artemis II mission has for more than a week captivated the public, with people around the world watching in awe as its intrepid crew dared to venture farther from Earth than ever before. Along the way, the crew under the command of NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman saw sights of the moon's far side that no human had ever laid eyes upon.
Three of those astronauts – NASA's Christina Koch and Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency – even made a little spaceflight history of their own. Koch became the first woman, Glover the first Black man and Hansen the first Canadian to ever venture within the vicinity of the moon.
Now, the crew of Artemis II are on the cusp of making a victorious homecoming, returning to Earth aboard their Orion spacecraft in a fiery, treacherous final leg that will end with a water landing in the Pacific Ocean. When all is said and done, they will have put about 695,081 miles on Orion's odometer since launching April 1 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, according to NASA.
