Aaaand breathe. After 10 extraordinary days in deep space, the crew of Artemis II has splashed down safely on Earth – marking the first time humans have travelled to the Moon since 1972.
Lifting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 1 April 2026, the mission carried four astronauts to lunar orbit by 5 April. A day later, they passed behind the Moon, losing all contact with Earth – a silence not experienced by any human crew since the Apollo program.
The overall significance of that moment – and the mission as a whole – is, quite simply, difficult to overstate. For more than 50 years, human spaceflight has barely ventured beyond low Earth orbit. Artemis II has changed that – and, critically, has shown NASA is ready for the next giant leap in its lunar ambitions.
That will come in the form of Artemis III (scheduled for mid-2027), which will remain in low Earth orbit to test rendezvous and docking with commercial lunar landers in Earth orbit. Then, finally, Artemis IV will attempt to put a crew on the lunar surface as early as 2028.
For now, though, here are some of the remarkable images captured by the Artemis II crew during their historic journey.
