Overview
- Close-up recovery footage released Monday shows Navy divers opening Orion’s hatch and greeting the four Artemis II astronauts after Friday’s Pacific splashdown off San Diego.
- NASA reported early checks found no unexpected heat-shield conditions after a planned six-minute reentry blackout and peak speeds near 25,000 mph during descent.
- The crew set a new human-distance mark of about 406,771 kilometers from Earth, then transferred to the USS John P. Murtha for medical checks before returning to Houston on Saturday.
- The 10-day flight doubled as a science and systems shakeout, with more than 7,000 lunar images captured and biomedical work such as the AVATAR tissue study to guide longer missions.
- Engineers are inspecting Orion for a 30-day initial report as NASA pivots to Artemis III in 2027 to test rendezvous and docking with commercial landers, with surface landings now planned for Artemis IV in 2028.