NASA’s Artemis II crew helped by Navy exiting the capsule in new closeup video

When people watched NASA’s Artemis II mission return to Earth, they saw helicopter views of small figures dressed in orange exiting the spacecraft on a raft.

But the US space agency has since released a short close-up video of the Navy recovery team as they opened the hatch on Friday (April 10). Trained divers and medics entered the tiny 330 cubic foot Orion capsule and greeted the four astronauts.

From the video cameras mounted on the recovery team’s helmets, shown in post X below, it’s like you’re right there with them. The team cheers and claps, with shouts of “Let’s go!” ” followed by “four greens” (an announcement that the crew was OK).

“Welcome home,” the recovery team told the Artemis II crew, Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, the first humans to fly around the moon since 1972.

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Up close, the spaceship, nicknamed Integrity by the crew, appeared battered and scorched as it floated in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California. The capsule had just plunged into Earth’s atmosphere, a fiery descent that required the crew to travel at speeds of 25,000 mph.

During this intense and dangerous phase, the astronauts experienced nearly 4G, a pressure exerted on them equal to four times their body weight. Without proper training, these conditions, coupled with adrenaline overload, could cause fainting.

But as the recovery team soon discovered, not only were the returning crew in good health, but they were in good spirits, smiling as they awaited procedures for leaving the spacecraft. At the end of the video, one of the recovery leaders, called “Vlad,” said he had a thing for Wiseman. The clip ends before “anything” is revealed.

“Jesse, Steve, Laddy and Vlad… it’s an incredible feeling to welcome you aboard Integrity after a journey of nearly 700,000 miles,” Wiseman said in an article on X. “I will always be grateful to you for your service to our crew and the nation.”

What is clear is that the people who welcomed Artemis II to Earth seemed just as elated as the astronauts themselves. Before boarding the crew’s living quarters for the 10-day journey, the team almost forgot to place the seal cover on the bottom edge of the hatch, in their eagerness to see their friends.

Artemis II, launched April 1, marked NASA’s triumphant return to human-led space exploration. She planned this trip as a critical cruise for the spacecraft before the agency attempted to land on the Moon. During the flight, the Artemis II crew put Orion through its paces, testing everything from propulsion and communications to the ability of humans to live, work, and make scientific observations far from home.

The day after Artemis II lands, Commander Reid Wiseman visits the Orion spacecraft in the well deck of the USS John P. Murtha.
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Filled with cameras, sensors, and experiments, the mission transformed the crew into test pilots and test subjects, collecting data to shape Artemis’ future voyages. A successful trip checks equipment and flight controllers for a moonwalk planned for 2028.

NASA is not only motivated to return to the Moon for the sake of the Moon, but to train to keep humans alive on another world for extended periods of time. This is crucial before sending astronauts on a month-long spaceflight to Mars, perhaps possible in the late 2030s.

A new space race also sets the schedule for the Artemis campaign. The United States wants to land on the Moon again before China, which is extremely close to achieving its first human moon landing.

If you thought ditching meant Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen could finally relax, you’d be wrong. Just hours after landing, NASA tested the crew’s mettle again with an obstacle course.

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