STORY: The Artemis II capsule and its four-member crew streaked through Earth's atmosphere and safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday (April 10) after nearly ten days in space, capping the first voyage by humans to the vicinity of the moon in over half a century.

NASA's gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, parachuted gently into the sea off the Southern California coast shortly after 5 p.m. PT (0000 GMT), concluding a mission that took the astronauts deeper into space than anyone had flown before.

Recovery teams were standing by to secure the floating capsule and retrieve the crew - U.S. astronauts Reid Wiseman, 50, Victor Glover, 49, and Christina Koch, 47, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, 50.

The Artemis II flight, traveling a total of 694,392 miles (1,117,515 km) across two Earth orbits and a climactic lunar flyby some 252,000 miles away, was the debut crewed test flight in a series of Artemis missions that aim to start landing astronauts on the lunar surface starting in 2028.

DESCRIPCIÓN DE IMÁGENES

SHOWS: OFF THE COAST, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (APRIL 10, 2026) (NASA - For editorial use only)

1. VARIOUS OF PARACHUTES DEPLOYING ON THE ARTEMIS II CREW CAPSULE APPROACHING SEA

2. CAPSULE AT SPLASHDOWN