On Friday, April 10, 2026, the Orion shuttle landed 40 to 50 miles off the coast of San Diego after taking pictures of the moon and making a full orbit. The landing from the atmosphere to the water lasted 15 minutes, with the Orion arriving at 8:07 P.M. ET, according to CBS News.
The mission lasted 10 days and consisted of a 4 person group. The crew included Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. The US government stored the Orion shuttle in San Diego after navy vessels recovered and performed medical evaluations on the astronauts on the USS John P. Murtha.
According to an article by NBC News, this is the first time NASA has sent people to the moon in the past 50 years. The Orion spacecraft’s mission also set a record for the farthest humans have traveled from Earth with the distance being 252,756 miles. This beat the Apollo 13’s record of 248,655 miles in 1970. The Artemis II mission covered 700,237 miles total. NASA plans to launch the next shuttle in 2027.
As shown by NASA, the shuttle captured 7,000 images of the moon. Included in these pictures is a solar eclipse. Later missions will include “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”. These missions will take place in 2027.
NASA also gave details about the recovery of the astronauts. NASA, along with the help of the US military, approached the astronauts once they touched down in the Pacific Ocean and helped them out of the spacecraft. From there, they were transported by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha and received their medical evaluations. As expected, the crew was able to return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday, April 11.
