STORY: :: April 8, 2026

:: Artemis II astronauts look back on a mission that took them a record distance from Earth

:: Christina Koch, Artemis II Mission Specialist

"I will miss this camaraderie. I will miss being this close with this many people and having a common purpose, a common mission, getting to work on it hard every day across hundreds of thousands of miles with the team on the ground. This sense of teamwork is something that you don't usually get, like as an adult. I mean, we are close like brothers and sisters and that is a privilege we will never have again."

:: Victor Glover, Artemis II Pilot

"We have to get back. There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us. There's so many more pictures, so many more stories. And gosh, I haven't even begun to process what we've been through and we've still got two more days. And riding a fireball through the atmosphere is what is profound as well. [...] I can tell you it's a lot and lifelong memories I'm going to be thinking about and talking about all of these things for the rest of my life for sure."

The Artemis II crew, flying in their Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, reached the moon earlier this week while cruising along a path that took them past the shadowed, lunar far side and then on to become the farthest-flying humans in history.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are the first wave of astronauts in a multibillion-dollar series of missions under the Artemis program that aims to return humans to the moon's surface by 2028 before China, and establish a long-term U.S. presence over the next decade, building a moon base for potential future missions to Mars.

The crew is due to return to Earth on Friday around 8 p.m. ET (0000 GMT Saturday), splashing down off the coast of San Diego, California to cap their nearly 10-day mission. They will reach peak speeds of up to 23,839 mph (38,365 kph) as they plunge into Earth's atmosphere.

The four astronauts on Monday (April 6) had reached a record-breaking distance from Earth of roughly 252,000 miles, surpassing by some 4,000 miles the previous record held by the Apollo 13 crew for 56 years.

The astronauts broke that record amid a six-hour lunar flyby in which they surveyed the lunar surface from roughly 4,000 miles above.