By BlueShift and AFP | 2026-04-10

Artemis II's four-member crew -- NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Victor Glover, along with the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen -- have broken records and set eyes on sights hitherto unseen.

After completing their history-making lunar flyby, the crew is bound for home on a free-return trajectory, with splashdown due in the Pacific Ocean late April 10.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said the ship that will recover the astronauts is en route to the meeting point, off the coast of California.

The mission's milestones include breaking the distance record set by the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, which Artemis II surpassed by more than 4,000 miles (6,000 km) as it reached its furthest distance from Earth, 252,756 miles (406,771 km).

The impressions formed, lessons learned, sights seen and overall impact of the Artemis II journey -- on the crew members, future space travel, scientific understanding and humankind -- will take years to unpack and process.

But as the journey nears its end, here are some initial highlights:

Landmark lunar flyby

The astronauts flew around the moon on April 6, in a landmark seven-hour flyby that marked the high point of Artemis II's lunar mission.

NASA broadcast the flyby live on its website, as well as on YouTube, Amazon and Netflix, with commentary from both the astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft and experts at the Mission Control center in Houston, Texas.

The flyby saw the Artemis II crew pass behind the far side of the moon, which is not visible to Earth.

The astronauts of the Apollo mission also flew behind the moon, but they were too close to witness it in entirety.

The Artemis II crew saw regions of the moon that had previously only been captured by robotic imagers.

Despite the technological advancements since the Apollo era, NASA still relies on the eyesight of its astronauts to learn more about the moon.

"The human eye is basically the best camera that could ever or will ever exist," Kelsey Young, the lead scientist for the Artemis II mission, told AFP.

"The number of receptors in the human eye far outweighs what a camera is able to do."

Apollo member's legacy

The crew began their lunar flyby with an unexpected message from the late astronaut Jim Lovell, who took part in the Apollo 8 and 13 missions and recorded the message shortly before his death.

"It's a historic day, and I know how busy you'll be, but don't forget to enjoy the view," the Artemis II astronauts heard from Lovell.

"Welcome to my old neighborhood," he said. "I'm proud to pass that torch on to you as you swing around the moon."

'We will always choose Earth'

The astronauts lost contact with Earth for about 40 minutes on April 6 as their spacecraft passed behind the moon.

The blackout period was expected but still notable: they were the first people in more than 50 years to lose contact with the rest of humanity.

"It is so great to hear from Earth again," said Koch, as the crew regained connection with their home planet.

"We will always choose Earth."

The moon's 'Grand Canyon'

The astronauts observed features never before seen with the human eye, sending back an image of the moon's Orientale basin, a massive crater that had only been viewed before by orbiting, uncrewed cameras.

"This mission marks the first time the entire basin has been seen with human eyes," NASA said.

Speaking to Canadian children live from space, Koch said the crew was most excited to see the basin, which resembles a bullseye and is sometimes known as the moon's "Grand Canyon."

"It's very distinctive and no human eyes previously had seen this crater until today, really, when we were privileged enough to see it," Koch said during a question-and-answer session hosted by the Canadian Space Agency.

'A bright spot on the moon'

The astronauts had an emotional moment during the lunar flyby as they proposed to name a crater on the moon in honor of the deceased wife of Artemis II mission commander Wiseman.

Carroll Taylor Wiseman died of cancer in 2020, and Wiseman, a former fighter pilot, has been raising their two daughters on his own since then.

"It's a bright spot on the moon. And we would like to call it Carroll," Hansen told a live broadcast. The crater can be seen "at certain times of the moon's transit around Earth," he said.

As Wiseman and others wiped away tears, the four astronauts pulled together in a silent, floating embrace.

The Artemis II crew dubbed another crater "Integrity," in honor of the name they have given their spacecraft.

A NASA spokesperson in Houston said the names proposed by the Artemis crew would be passed along to the International Astronomical Union, the body responsible for naming celestial bodies and features.

'Earthset' and 'Earthrise'

The Artemis II crew shared a stunning shot of an "Earthset," the moment when Earth drops below the rugged lunar horizon.

The image was a deliberate nod to the iconic "Earthrise" image taken during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, a shot that helped capture the public's imagination as humans traveled around the moon for the first time.

The iconic photograph taken by NASA astronaut William Anders captured the bright blue Earth against the vast darkness of space, with the moon's cratered surface in the foreground.

The modern version released by NASA pairs the delicate, watery planet Earth with the harsh curve of the moon, separated by black space.

Later on, as the Orion capsule emerged from the lunar far side, the Artemis II crew captured a companion Earthrise photo.

Total eclipse of the Sun

Near the end of their lunar flyby, the astronauts witnessed a solar eclipse.

For about 53 minutes, their spacecraft perfectly aligned with the moon and the Sun, causing the star to disappear from view.

The astronauts had the chance to study the solar corona, the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere, which was visible as a sort of glowing halo.

Meteorites striking moon

During the solar eclipse, the Artemis II crew observed and reported seeing six meteor strikes -- flashes of light on the moon's surface.

"That was definitely impact flashes on the moon. And Jeremy (Hansen) just saw another one," Wiseman said.

"It's a pinprick of light," Hansen later told NASA. "I would suspect there were a lot more of them."

"I would say they were a millisecond, like the fastest a camera shutter can open and close," added Wiseman, who said the flashes were "white to bluish white."

"Humans probably have not evolved to see what we're seeing," said Glover. "It is truly hard to describe. It is amazing."

Among NASA's team in Houston, there were "audible screams of delight" from scientists when the crew described flashes of light caused by meteorite impact, said Kelsey Young, the mission's lunar science lead.

"Amazed," Young said, as she followed the spacecraft from more than 250,000 miles (400,000 km) away on Earth.

The phenomenon is "something that we have not witnessed often," the mission's backup astronaut, the Canadian Space Agency's Jenni Gibbons, told AFP, adding that "they were really high priority science for us."

Ground crews are now working to match these observations with data from a satellite orbiting the moon, Young said.

'We're all one people'

The Artemis II crew on April 7 got to chat with with astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

"We know how fortunate all of us are as humans to come up here and look down at the Earth from above," said ISS Crew-12 commander Jessica Meir. "Every astronaut that comes to space remarks on that."

"And we really wanted to hear what that felt like, how different that felt now from your new perspective around the moon?"

Koch said viewing Earth from near the moon, which is roughly 1,000 times farther away than the ISS, was particularly striking given all the "blackness."

"It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive," she said.

Speaking from aboard the Orion spacecraft in the earlier part of the Artemis II mission, Glover shared a similar message for people on Earth.

"You look amazing. You look beautiful," he said.

"From up here, you also look like one thing," he added. "We're all one people."