HOUSTON — The Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10 following their lunar mission. After returning to Earth, the crew underwent medical check-ups and motor control tests at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The Artemis II crew includes astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. Researchers collected postflight health data within a day of splashdown, including blood pressure, heart rate, eye health, and motor control. Initial postflight health data collection concluded 45 days after splashdown.
Crew members completed an obstacle course to assess their adaptation to Earth's gravity, which involved lying down, standing up, unfurling a rope ladder, and climbing a ladder. They also completed obstacle courses while wearing spacesuits offloaded to simulate lunar gravity, approximately one-sixth of Earth's gravity. Some crew members performed postflight cognition tests and a simulated manual spacecraft docking task for the ARCHeR study. Wrist-worn devices tracked physiological data during the mission to evaluate the impact of spaceflight hazards on crew performance.
Researchers are comparing postflight blood and saliva samples with preflight and in-flight samples for the Immune Biomarkers study, which investigates whether dormant viruses reactivate in astronauts during spaceflight. Organ chips containing bone marrow cells from each astronaut flew on the mission and are being analyzed at a laboratory in Boston operated by Emulate. Researchers are using single-cell RNA sequencing to compare these flown organ chips with ground controls and blood samples. Medical teams will monitor the health of the Artemis II astronauts throughout their lifetimes.
During their mission, on April 6, the Artemis II crew observed lunar features for approximately seven hours during Orion's closest approach to the Moon. Scientists plan to release a report of initial lunar data interpretations later this year, covering impact flashes, surface color variations, and the morphology of faults and ridges. Mission data includes images, video, and audio recordings of the lunar surface and surrounding space.
An image transmitted from the Orion spacecraft shows Earth eclipsing the Sun from the perspective of the crew after the translunar injection burn. The camera used to capture this image was set to an ISO of 51,200. The image displays green auroras near Earth's poles and zodiacal light appearing to the lower right of the planet. City lights over Spain, Portugal, northern Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Brazil, along with the planet Venus, are visible in the photograph. Cindy Evans, a senior exploration scientist at the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division of the Johnson Space Center, commented on the image, "I love the image so much because it was taken with Earth in moonshine, and shows Earth as a solar system body, a dynamic planet interacting with the solar wind, and a place harboring life."
The Artemis program began with the uncrewed Artemis I mission, which orbited the Moon in 2022. The program aims to return humans to the Moon and prepare for future exploration of Mars.