Artemis II crew return to Earth after moon trip

Emotions ran high Friday evening at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and his American crewmates returned from the moon, ending the first human lunar voyage in more than half a century with a successful Pacific splashdown.

Inside the John H. Chapman Space Centre in Longueuil, Que., staff and members of the media watched a livestream from NASA showing the Orion spacecraft tearing through Earth’s atmosphere, enduring intense heat and a brief communications blackout before reappearing on course for landing. 

All eyes were on the spacecraft’s heat shield, designed to withstand temperatures of several thousand degrees during re-entry. On Orion’s previous uncrewed test flight in 2022, the shield returned heavily charred and pockmarked, adding to the tension surrounding this return.

The final minutes before landing were filled with anticipation. 

“We’re feeling the same emotions as we did on launch day — we’re so excited,” said Caroline-Emmanuelle Morisset, senior scientist in lunar and planetary science at the Canadian Space Agency. “But at the same time, we’re starting to get a bit jittery.”

The four-person crew — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Hansen — splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, aboard the capsule Integrity, which completed its descent on autopilot.

“A perfect bull’s-eye splashdown,” reported mission control’s Rob Navias.

A message from Canadian astronaut Jenni Gibbons, Hansen’s backup on the mission, was played at the Canadian Space Agency shortly before splashdown. She described her role as a voice link from Earth as “the honour of my career for a really long time.”

Travelling at Mach 33 — roughly 33 times the speed of sound — the crew’s return marked a level of speed not seen since NASA’s Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s.

The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha awaited the crew’s arrival off the San Diego coast, along with a squadron of military planes and helicopters.

After splashdown, the crew was set to undergo initial medical checks aboard the recovery ship before being flown to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. 

Kumudu Jinadasa, a senior engineer at the Canadian Space Agency, said the first priority is ensuring the astronauts’ health.

“There’s no doubt that the first thing that needs to be done is to undergo medical tests,” she said.

The 10-day mission saw the astronauts loop around the moon in a six-hour flyby, travelling farther into space than any humans before and offering a close-up look at the lunar surface for the first time in decades.

Launched from Florida on April 1, the astronauts racked up one win after another as they deftly navigated NASA’s long-awaited lunar comeback, the first major step in establishing a sustainable moon base.

Under the revamped Artemis program, next year’s Artemis III will see astronauts practise docking their capsule with a lunar lander or two in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will attempt to land a crew of two near the moon’s south pole in 2028.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 10, 2026.

–with files from the Associated Press

By Charlotte Glorieux | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.