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.
Taken by Reid Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II mission, this striking view of Earth was captured from the window of the Orion spacecraft on 2 April 2026 – moments after the engines fired to send the spacecraft out of Earth’s orbit and on course for the Moon.
Christina Koch, a mission specialist on Artemis II, is seen here on day four of the flight, preparing for the upcoming lunar flyby after completing a session of aerobic exercise on the spacecraft’s flywheel device.
The other Artemis II mission specialist, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, enjoys a shave inside the Orion spacecraft during Flight Day 5 and ahead of the crew's lunar flyby on 6 April 2026.
Artemis II pilot and NASA astronaut Victor Glover peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's windows, looking back at Earth.
An 'Earthset', captured through the window of the Orion spacecraft on 6 April 2026, as the Artemis II mission crew swept past the Moon.
A muted blue Earth, streaked with bright white clouds, sinks behind the cratered lunar horizon, its night side already in shadow while daylight still illuminates swirling systems over Australia and Oceania.
In the foreground lies the lunar Ohm crater, its terraced edges and flat floor broken by a cluster of central peaks – formed in the instant after impact, when the Moon’s surface briefly liquefied and rebounded upwards like a splash frozen in time.
In the above photo, the Orion spacecraft glows in the foreground, lit by the Sun, with a waxing gibbous Moon hanging in the distance. Near the lower centre of the lunar surface sits the vast Orientale basin – a 965km-wide impact scar encircled by mountains.
This enormous basin marks a natural boundary between the Moon’s two faces. To its left lies the far side, forever hidden from view on Earth; to its right, the familiar near side, shaped by vast, dark plains of ancient lava that give the Moon its distinctive patchwork appearance.
The Artemis II crew – Mission Specialist Christina Koch (top left), Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen (bottom left), Commander Reid Wiseman (bottom right), and Pilot Victor Glover (top right) – use eclipse viewers to protect their eyes at key moments during the solar eclipse they have experienced during their lunar flyby.
Captured by the Artemis II mission crew as they passed around the Moon’s far side, this close-up shows Vavilov crater sitting on the edge of the much larger Hertzsprung basin. You can clearly see the landscape change – from smoother ground inside a ring of mountains to rougher, more broken terrain beyond.
Long shadows stretch across the scene at the terminator – the boundary between lunar day and night – sharply picking out Vavilov’s structure and the debris flung out by past impacts.
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Victor Glover and Christina Koch spent hours documenting the Moon during the spacecraft’s flyby on day six of the journey.
Over roughly seven hours, the crew took turns at the windows of the Orion spacecraft, capturing images and observations as they passed around the far side. At their closest point, they came within just 6,545km of the lunar surface.
As the Artemis II mission crew flew over the Moon’s day–night boundary, they noted it was “anything but a straight line”. Instead, the jagged edges of craters caught the sunlight, standing out like isolated “islands” in the darkness.
From the vast Orientale basin, formed around 3.7 billion years ago, long chains of smaller craters can be seen streaking across the surface, reaching almost to this boundary. These scars cut across the smoother Hertzsprung basin at the centre of the image – a clue that it must be even older, preserving a deeper chapter in the Moon’s history.
Pictured from left to right, Angela Garcia, Kelsey Young and Trevor Graff – the first science officers of the Artemis program – are seen in the White Flight Control Room at the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center.
Photographed around 10 minutes before 'Earthset' during the mission, they are monitoring the spacecraft’s data in real time. From the Science console, their role is to track measurements and system performance, helping flight controllers keep the mission running smoothly and safely.
Jeremy Hansen, a member of the Artemis II mission crew, captures an image through one of the windows of the Orion spacecraft.
To get a clear shot, he’s using a camera shroud – essentially a dark curtain with a small opening for the lens – which blocks out light from inside the cabin and prevents it from reflecting off the window.
Our planet drifts towards the lunar horizon in this image captured by the crew. Seen as a delicate crescent, Earth is lit from the right, with its night side already fading into darkness. On the sunlit edge, bright clouds swirl over the muted blues of Australia and Oceania.
In the foreground, the Moon’s rugged surface is etched with faint, chain-like grooves. These are secondary crater chains – scars left by debris blasted out during earlier impacts, which fell back to the surface in long, scattered lines.
NASA’s Orion spacecraft is pictured here from one of the cameras mounted on its solar array wings. At the time this photo was taken, the Artemis II crew was in a sleep period ahead of beginning their seventh day into the mission.
The Artemis II mission crew share a moment of celebration inside the Orion spacecraft, gathering for a group hug as they begin the journey home.
The image was taken shortly after their swing around the Moon on 6 April 2026. By the following day, they had passed beyond the point where the Moon’s gravity dominates, and were once again firmly on their way back to Earth.
Earth slips behind the Moon’s curved horizon at 6:41 pm EDT on 6 April 2026, captured during the Artemis II mission flyby.
Along the edge of the lunar surface sits the vast Orientale basin, while the older Hertzsprung basin appears as faint, overlapping rings, partly disrupted by the younger Vavilov crater.
Above is a breathtaking snapshot from the mission, capturing our home galaxy, the Milky Way, in all its grandeur.
Flight controllers monitor the Artemis II mission and its Orion spacecraft from the White Flight Control Room at NASA Johnson Space Center on 8 April 2026.
Drifting under parachutes, the Orion capsule returns to Earth after surviving the searing heat of re-entry.
Encircled by Navy divers, the Artemis II crew await airlift from a recovery raft in the Pacific Ocean.
Victor Glover and Christina Koch sit aboard a US Navy Seahawk helicopter after their successful splashdown and recovery, their mission now complete.
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