NASA’s Orion capsule, named Integrity, re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California shortly after 2:07 a.m. Warsaw time, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The crew—three Americans and one Canadian—travelled more than 406,000 km away from Earth, farther than any humans had flown before, in a key test of systems for future lunar missions.
The Artemis II mission, which covered more than 1.1 million km in total, was the first crewed flight in NASA’s Artemis programme, aimed at returning astronauts to the moon later this decade.
"A perfect bull’s-eye splashdown for Integrity and its four astronauts," NASA commentator Rob Navias said after the landing, as cited by the Reuters news agency.
Photo: EPA/BILL INGALLS/NASA HANDOUT via PAP
"We are stable, one through four green crew members," mission commander Reid Wiseman radioed shortly after splashdown, indicating all astronauts were in good condition.
President Donald Trump congratulated the crew in a post on his Truth Social platform, calling the mission "spectacular" and the landing "perfect."
The flight followed the uncrewed Artemis I test mission in 2022 and is seen as a critical step toward a planned crewed lunar landing, which would be the first since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in 1972, Reuters reported.
This image released by NASA shows an "Earthset" captured by the Orion spacecraft crew during the Artemis II moon flyby mission on April 7, 2026. Photo: EPA/NASA/HANDOUT via PAP
NASA aims to return humans to the moon before the end of the decade and establish a sustained presence there, as part of longer-term plans for human missions to Mars.
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Source: Reuters, IAR, PAP