NASA’s Artemis II mission started on April 1 and concluded on April 10 with four astronauts returning to Earth off the coast of San Diego. The 695,000-mile journey around the moon marked the first time humans had traveled beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 completed the original lunar program in Dec. 1972.
Artemis II is the first crewed mission under the Artemis program, launched with the purpose of testing the Orion spacecraft's life support systems with humans aboard and to lay the groundwork for future crewed missions to the lunar surface. The crew successfully met every primary objective: testing life support, manually piloting the spacecraft, executing course-correction maneuvers, performing a lunar flyby with coverage of the Moon’s far side and a safe re-entry and recovery. The next mission, Artemis III, aims for a lunar landing as early as next year, shaping the trajectory of American human spaceflight.
The four-person crew — Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — represented the first person of color, first woman, and first Canadian, respectively, to travel beyond low Earth orbit. They named their Orion spacecraft “Integrity,” symbolizing the culture of trust and respect shared across the mission team. On the sixth day, during their seven-hour flyby of the Moon’s far side, they flew over terrain no human eyes had directly observed and documented a rare in-space solar eclipse with close-up details of craters.
In a first for NASA, each crew member carried an iPhone 17 Pro Max, fully qualified for extended use in orbit, alongside professional Nikon cameras. Koch used her iPhone to take a selfie as she looked back at the Earth; Wiseman took a picture of the Chebyshev crater at 8x zoom from 250,000 miles away. The full image archive is available through NASA’s image library, including the lunar flyby gallery and the multimedia archive.
When the crew reached the farthest point in their journey — 252,756 miles from Earth — they proposed names for two unnamed craters on the Moon’s far side. One was named “Integrity,” after the spacecraft, and the other “Carroll” — after Commander Wiseman’s wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who died of cancer in 2020. Hansen radioed mission control, referring to the crater, and said “Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie. It's a bright spot on the Moon. And we would like to call it Carroll.” The crew embraced each other, and Mission Control held 45 seconds of silence, then Capsule Communicator Jenni Gibbons responded, “Integrity and Carroll Crater. Loud and clear. Thank you.” As of now, the proposed name is pending approval by the International Astronomical Union.
On April 16, at a post-mission press conference held at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the crew reflected on their experience and what the journey had meant to them. Wiseman opened by crediting his crewmates, saying “This was an unbelievable adventure, and it was made possible by this crew and the support of each other throughout the whole thing.”
Glover said they had accomplished exactly what they set out to do and were now coming to terms with that achievement.
For Hansen, the global reaction reinforced a belief he already held: “Humans are just great people in general. We don’t always do great things. We’re not always in our integrity, but our default is to be good to one another.”
On the topic of the spacecraft’s readiness for the next mission, Wiseman expressed his confidence, stating “My own personal opinion, they could put Artemis III Orion on the Space Launch System tomorrow and launch it, and the crew would be in great shape. This vehicle really handled very well.”
Koch also shared a similar sense of confidence, adding “We are feeling even more excited and just as ready to take that on as an agency.”
With Artemis II complete, NASA is now focused on Artemis III, aimed for a lunar landing as early as 2027, which would be the first crewed landing in over 50 years. NASA is targeting an enduring human presence on the lunar surface and, eventually, the first crewed missions to Mars.
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Photo: Mikaela Arnold
