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Three months after their record-breaking flight around the Moon, the Artemis II astronauts were reunited with their Orion spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States, on Wednesday.
Launched atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket in April, Artemis II was the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft and the first mission to send humans towards the Moon in more than 50 years.
The last time the four astronauts saw the launch pad, the towering rocket had stood on it.
“It’s a lonely place without that rocket on it,” said Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander.
Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen spent the day thanking the teams who helped send them into space.
Their mission set a new record for the farthest distance travelled by humans from Earth, reaching 406,771 kilometres during the lunar fly-around.
The crew are now preparing to hand over to the next Artemis team. Last month, NASA announced the Artemis III crew, made up of three US astronauts and Italian European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano.
Set for 2027, Artemis III is expected to remain in Earth orbit, where the crew will practise docking with lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
The all-male Artemis III crew has drawn attention because Artemis II’s Christina Koch became the first woman to fly around the Moon.
But Koch said she was not concerned by the selection, saying it would have been worse for someone to overrule NASA’s process simply “to make it look a certain way”.
“I am so glad and so proud that that’s not the situation we have,” she told reporters.
Artemis IV is expected to follow as early as 2028, with NASA planning to land two astronauts on the Moon. The astronauts chosen for that landing have not yet been announced.