Overview
- The four Artemis II astronauts reunited with their Orion capsule at Kennedy Space Center and publicly thanked the teams that prepared, launched and recovered the mission.
- The April fly-around carried commander Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, pilot Victor Glover and Canadian Jeremy Hansen and set a new distance record of 252,756 miles.
- NASA is moving toward Artemis III, an Earth-orbit mission to test rendezvous and docking with lunar landers under development by SpaceX and Blue Origin as part of certifying those systems.
- Jeremy Hansen confirmed he will leave the Canadian Space Agency in September but will stay involved as a Royal Canadian Air Force reservist and continue supporting Artemis activities.
- The Artemis effort pairs NASA hardware such as the Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule with commercial landers and is scheduled to progress toward a crewed lunar landing on a later flight targeted as early as 2028.