Nearly a week after returning from their 10-day mission around the moon, the Artemis II crew spoke with ABC’s David Muir at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston about a dramatic reentry and a textbook splashdown. They described a sequence that was more violent than any launch and deeply affecting for everyone on board.
Mission specialist Christina Koch said reentry was far wilder than liftoff — the grand finale of the flight — and stressed that coming back to a planet is nothing like landing an airplane. As the Orion capsule plunged through the atmosphere, friction and compression produced a glowing plasma bubble that surrounded the spacecraft, creating sky-high temperatures (roughly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit) and a roughly six-minute communications blackout. Koch recalled a blinding flash from that plasma, likening the brightness to an arc welder, and an intense rumbling during descent that no Earth-based test could replicate.
Commander Reid Wiseman kept the crew focused during those tense minutes, repeatedly confirming that systems were nominal. His steady leadership helped reassure the team even when ground contact was lost. Wiseman praised pilot Victor Glover for his calm and exacting performance: under about four Gs for roughly 13 minutes, Glover maintained a precise cadence of altitudes and speeds and executed entry procedures without missing a beat.
Glover described the heat as both literally and figuratively intense and emphasized how critical their internal timeline was during the blackout. With Mission Control unable to send commands, the crew had to be prepared to intervene if automatic sequences failed — for example, to ensure the forward bay cover jettisoned and the drogue, pilot, and main parachutes deployed. Their preparedness paid off; the parachutes worked as planned and the capsule splashed down smoothly.
The splashdown itself felt profound. Glover called it a spiritual moment and recalled greeting Earth as they hit the ocean. Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen said seeing the intact Orion afterward filled him with immense gratitude for the spacecraft that had shielded and sustained the four astronauts.
The crew also reflected on a tender moment from their journey that was captured on NASA’s livestream: Hansen’s suggestion to name a lunar crater in honor of Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll. Wiseman described that gesture as one of the highest honors he could imagine — a lasting tribute for his daughters and a memory he will always carry from the mission.