Artemis II Splashdown — Mission Complete After 10-Day Historic Lunar Flyby

Orion splashed down off the coast of San Diego, California at approximately 8:07 p.m. EDT on April 10, 2026, completing humanity's first crewed lunar flyby in over 50 years. The Orion capsule executed a skip-reentry trajectory — the modified approach validated after the Artemis I heat shield anomaly — decelerating from lunar return speed before parachute deployment at approximately 6,000 feet, with the three main chutes fully deployed at 8:04 p.m. EDT. The USS John P. Murtha recovered the crew. Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen were extracted from Orion within two hours of splashdown and flown to Johnson Space Center. The 10-day mission accomplished all primary objectives: validating Orion life support for crewed deep-space flight, testing the Orion Crew Survival System suits in microgravity, demonstrating manual piloting in deep space, and collecting scientific imagery of 30 lunar surface targets. The modified skip-reentry data directly enables Artemis IV's crewed lunar landing.