NASA Welcomes Record-Setting Artemis II Moonfarers Back to Earth

NASA’s Orion spacecraft with Artemis II crewmembers NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, commander; Victor Glover, pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist aboard was seen as it splashed down at 5:07 p.m. PDT in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, Friday, April 10, 2026. NASA’s Artemis II mission took Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back to Earth.

Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

The first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than half a century are back on Earth after a record-setting mission aboard NASA’s Artemis II test flight.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen splashed down at 5:07 p.m. PDT Friday off the coast of San Diego, completing a nearly 10-day journey that took them 252,756 miles from home at their farthest distance from Earth.

“Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, welcome home, and congratulations on a truly historic achievement. NASA is grateful to President Donald Trump and partners in Congress for providing the mandate and resources that made this mission and the future of Artemis possible,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “Artemis II demonstrated extraordinary skill, courage, and dedication as the crew pushed Orion, SLS (Space Launch System), and human exploration farther than ever before. As the first astronauts to fly this rocket and spacecraft, the crew accepted significant risk in service of the knowledge gained and the future we are determined to build. NASA also acknowledges the contributions of the entire NASA workforce, along with our international partners, whose expertise and commitment were essential to this mission’s success. With Artemis II complete, focus now turns confidently toward assembling Artemis III and preparing to return to the lunar surface, build the base, and never give up the Moon again.”

After splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the astronauts were met by a combined NASA and U.S. military team that assisted them out of the spacecraft in open water and transported them via helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for initial medical checkouts. The crew members are expected to return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday, April 11.

During their mission, Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen flew 694,481 miles in total. Their lunar flyby took them farther than any humans have ever traveled before, surpassing the previous distance record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.

The first Artemis crew launched on NASA’s SLS rocket at 6:35 p.m. April 1, from Launch Pad 39B at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. With 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, the American-built rocket propelled the crew inside the Orion spacecraft to space, delivering it to orbit with pinpoint accuracy after a smooth countdown conducted by the agency’s Artemis launch control team.

During the first day in space, the astronauts and teams on the ground checked out the spacecraft — named Integrity by the crew — to confirm all systems were healthy ahead of the transit to the Moon. NASA also deployed four CubeSats from international partners to Earth orbit.

On the second day of the test flight, with all systems Go, Orion’s service module fired its main engine, placing the astronauts on a trajectory that brought them 4,067 miles above the lunar surface at their closest approach.

“The Artemis II crew is home. The entry, descent, and landing systems performed as designed and the final test was completed as intended. This moment belongs to the thousands of people across fourteen countries who built, tested, and trusted this vehicle. Their work protected four human lives traveling at 25,000 miles per hour and brought them safely back to Earth,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “Artemis II proved the vehicle, the teams, the architecture, and the international partnership that will return humanity to the lunar surface. Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy carried the hopes of this world farther than humans have traveled in more than half a century. Fifty‑three years ago, humanity left the Moon. This time, we returned to stay. The future is ours to win.”

With astronauts aboard for the first time, engineers put Orion through a full in‑flight evaluation. The crew tested the spacecraft’s life support systems, confirming Orion can sustain humans in deep space. During several piloting demonstrations, crew members took manual control of the spacecraft, flying Orion to validate its handling and collect data that will guide future rendezvous and docking operations with human-rated landers during Artemis III and beyond.

The crew completed a series of tests to inform how NASA will fly future missions to the Moon, including evaluations of how the spacecraft operates during crew exercise, emergency equipment and procedures, the Orion crew survival system spacesuits, and other critical spacecraft systems.

Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen also supported scientific investigations to help NASA prepare astronauts to live and work on the Moon as the agency builds a Moon Base and looks toward Mars. These experiments — including the AVATAR investigation, which studies how human tissue responds to microgravity and the deep space radiation environment, and other human research performance studies — are gathering essential health data for long-duration missions.

During their April 6 lunar flyby, the astronauts captured more than 7,000 images of the lunar surface and a solar eclipse, during which the Moon blocked the Sun from Orion’s vantage point. The imagery includes striking views of earthset and earthrise, impact craters, ancient lava flows, our Milky Way galaxy, and surface fractures and color variations across the lunar terrain.

They documented the topography along the terminator — the boundary between lunar day and night — where low-angle sunlight casts long shadows across the surface, creating illumination conditions similar to those in the South Pole region where astronauts are scheduled to land in 2028. The crew also proposed potential names for two lunar craters and reported meteoroid impact flashes on the night side of the Moon.

Artemis II science will pave the way for future missions to the Moon’s surface by helping advance mission operations and training astronauts to use well-informed judgment to identify areas of high interest for science and exploration.

With the crew safely on Earth, NASA and its partners now will turn attention to preparing for next year’s Artemis III mission, when a new Orion crew will test integrated operations with commercially built Moon landers in low Earth orbit.

As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, NASA will send Artemis astronauts on increasingly challenging missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface, and lay the groundwork for sending the first astronauts – American astronauts –  to Mars.

To learn more about the Artemis program, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis 

Bethany Stevens / Rachel Kraft
Headquarters, Washington

Source: NASA Welcomes Record-Setting Artemis II Moonfarers Back to Earth  - NASA 

AMOC collapse could turn Southern Ocean into carbon source, adding 0.2°C to global warming - Earth - Earth Sciences - Environment

Changes in surface air temperature due to AMOC collapse for the fully coupled model setup in the experiments with a hosing rate of 0.2 Sv. Credit: Communications Earth & Environment (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-026-03427-w

A shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could trigger a substantial release of stored ocean carbon into the atmosphere over hundreds of years, according to a new study that simulated such a collapse under stable climate conditions. This would add 0.2°C of extra global warming. The new paper from researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), published in Communications Earth & Environment, highlights the AMOC's role as a key regulator of the global climate.

To assess how a collapse of the AMOC—a major Atlantic Ocean circulation system that transports warm water north and cold water south—would affect the carbon cycle and global temperatures, the authors simulated Earth's climate stabilizing at different atmospheric CO₂ levels and subsequently applied fresh water input to the Atlantic surface to induce an AMOC shutdown.

At pre-industrial atmospheric CO₂ concentrations of 280 ppm, even if the AMOC collapses under freshwater forcing, it fully recovers once the forcing ends. However, at CO₂ levels of 350ppm or higher—well below today's level of around 430ppm—once the AMOC collapses it stays in the "off" state.

"Higher CO₂ concentrations fundamentally alter the AMOC's stability, pushing the system into a bistable regime where the AMOC could weaken over hundreds of years before shifting to, and remaining in, a collapsed state. Once shutdown, we see it does not recover in the long run," says lead author Da Nian of PIK.

In all scenarios analyzed in the paper, a shift of the AMOC into an off state would see additional warming of 0.17°C to 0.27°C.

"This change in temperatures is driven by a large release of carbon from the Southern Ocean, due to enhanced mixing that brings carbon-rich deep waters to the surface," explains co-author Matteo Willeit of PIK.

Regional temperature changes would be even more pronounced than global mean temperature change. In one scenario at CO₂ concentrations of 450ppm—last experienced by Earth several million years ago, when polar ice was significantly reduced—Antarctic temperatures rise by 6°C while Arctic temperatures drop by 7°C due to AMOC collapse.

"The ocean has been our greatest ally, absorbing a quarter of human-made CO₂ emissions. Our study shows how an AMOC collapse could flip the Southern Ocean from a carbon sink into a carbon source, releasing vast amounts of CO₂ and fueling further global warming. The more CO₂ in our atmosphere at the stage of shutdown, the higher the likelihood of additional warming. Put simply, rising emissions today increase the risk of a stronger climate response down the line," says PIK Director and co-author Johan Rockström. 

Provided by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 

by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan

Source: AMOC collapse could turn Southern Ocean into carbon source, adding 0.2°C to global warming