Four astronauts just splashed down in the Pacific after looping around the Moon. My first thought was the ending of Life. My second thought was that we're back to doing big space stuff again.
Fifty-three years between trips. Welcome home.
Artemis II launched April 1 from Kennedy Space Center. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen flew a free-return trajectory around the Moon aboard an Orion capsule they named Integrity. They broke the Apollo 13 distance record (248,655 miles from Earth), watched a 53-minute solar eclipse from behind the far side, and splashed down off San Diego at 8:07 p.m. EDT on April 10 after 10 days in transit. Every mission objective was met. Artemis III is next, now a low-Earth-orbit test of the landers rather than a landing; NASA moved the first crewed landing to Artemis IV in a February 2026 rework of the program. (Corrected 2026-09-23.)
Artemis II was the exhibition match. We went the distance, proved the hardware works, proved we can still reach the Moon. Now Clubber Lang is waiting. The real fight is putting boots on the surface.