Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent

When Reid Wiseman described the crew's reaction to the global response, the word he reached for was "shocked."

Not moved, not gratified — shocked.

That surprise tells you something important about what this mission got right, and why it cut through in ways Nasa programmes have sometimes struggled to in the past.

Space agencies have become adept at selling missions. They produce beautiful footage, expert briefings, immaculate press packs. What they are less practised at is letting astronauts be human in public.

Artemis II was different. These four people did not perform readiness. They showed uncertainty, emotion and laughter in roughly equal measure. When things confused them, they said so. When the view overwhelmed them, they did not compose themselves first.

Christina Koch spoke about the mission cutting across "lines and identities." Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian on his first spaceflight, reflected that humans' default state is to be good — that the kindness they encountered from strangers bore that out.

These are not remarks of a media-trained crew reciting a script. They are the observations of people genuinely astonished by what they found, including the response of the planet they had left behind.

People watched four likable individuals, as much human as heroic, face the unknown, and in doing so the crew made space feel like a shared endeavour rather than a government programme.

That distinction, fragile as it is, may prove to be this mission's most durable legacy.

We're ending our live coverage of this event now, but you can read more about the mission here: Artemis II crew: 'We left as friends — we came back as best friends'

Several countries have ambitions to put people on the Moon in the 2030s.

European astronauts are set to join later Artemis missions, and Japan has also secured seats. China is building its own craft, targeting a first landing near the Moon's south pole by 2030.

Russia continues to talk about flying cosmonauts to the surface and building a small base sometime between about 2030 and 2035. However, sanctions, funding pressures and technical setbacks mean its timetable is highly optimistic.

India has also expressed ambitions to one day see its own astronauts walking on the Moon. The country's space agency set out a goal of sending astronauts to the Moon by about 2040 following the success of an unmanned mission that landed on the Moon in 2023. This would be part of a push to move its human spaceflight programme beyond low Earth orbit.

Grace Eliza Goodwin
US reporter

In today's press conference, we heard from the four Artemis II astronauts who have now travelled further away from Earth than any other humans.

Mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen successfully splashed down to Earth last Friday after a 10-day trip beyond the far side of the moon.

After thanking everyone who made the mission possible, they shared their thoughts on how the mission went and what could be improved.

Glover said the spacecraft "flew like a dream", describing it as an "immense privilege". But, there's still a few kinks to be worked out with the spaceship's toilet, though Wiseman stressed it had worked.

They also explained how the mission shifted their personal perspectives, offered advice for future astronauts, and expressed how close they became with one another.

"It's very hard to grasp what we just went through," Wiseman said.

"Humans are just great people," Hansen said. "What I have seen has brought me more joy and more hope for our future."

Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent

Reid Wiseman is a test pilot and naval aviator. He spent years training for technical emergencies — those with protocols, checklists, procedural responses. Nothing in that preparation equipped him for what happened when he looked out of the Orion capsule and could not process what he saw.

He sought out the ship's chaplain. Wiseman is not, by his own account, a religious man. But at that moment he needed a framework his training could not provide. He broke down in tears. Later he tried to articulate why: "I don't think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we're looking at." That is a striking admission from someone chosen for his capacity to function under pressure.

Jeremy Hansen reached for similar language. At around 12:43 in the debrief he looked into the depth of the galaxy and said simply: "there is something in there."

It is not a scientific statement — it is something older, an acknowledgement that the encounter moved into territory rational language cannot map. He later called that depth "mind blowing," which is perhaps the most honest thing anyone can say.

We train astronauts obsessively for mechanical failure. We have no equivalent preparation for the shock of the sublime. What Wiseman's chaplain moment reveals is not weakness but a genuine gap in how we ready people for deep space — and it may be that the hardest challenge of lunar missions has nothing to do with propulsion or shielding at all.

Image source, NASA

While Artemis II saw parts of the Moon previously unseen, it didn't actually land on the lunar surface.

That will come later.

This mission was meant to lay the ground for a lunar landing by astronauts in the Artemis IV mission, planned for 2028.

Ahead of that, Nasa plans another crewed test mission, Artemis III, in 2027, to rehearse Orion's rendezvous and docking with one or more lunar landers and to try out the new spacesuits if they are ready in time.

When Artemis IV finally flies, the astronauts will be heading to the Moon's south pole.

After this, the aim is to have another landing later in 2028 with the Artemis V mission, to build up the capability for a sustained human presence on the Moon.

Further Artemis missions will focus on constructing a Moon base and flying crews regularly to the surface, with more landings, new surface modules and robotic rovers to follow.

More countries will join the effort, with astronauts from a widening group of nations living and working on and around the Moon for longer stays.

Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent

For the Artemis crew, it is worth remembering that the Apollo pioneers showed the psychological impact of going further than any human had gone before.

Neil Armstrong could have been anything he wanted when he came home: politician, CEO, permanent global celebrity. Instead, the first man on the Moon chose to step away from the spotlight.

Within two years he left NASA and quietly became a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati, taking a heavy teaching load and building courses for students who often found him a demanding but modest lecturer.

He has been described by colleagues as a “reluctant hero”: the same ice‑cool, self‑contained temperament that made him the right person to take that first step also inclined him to seek his life back afterwards, rather than live as a professional icon.

Others struggled. Buzz Aldrin has spoken and written candidly about the years after Apollo 11, when the parades were over and he battled depression and alcohol addiction. He has described feeling exhausted, unsure how to follow a moonwalk, and sliding into a period that nearly destroyed his career and his personal life.

Crucially, he also talks about recovery: hospital treatment for depression, giving up alcohol in the late 1970s, and then using his experience to help others and to campaign for exploration. His story is a reminder that even the most lionised astronauts are human – and that support after a mission can matter as much as training before it.

We've just heard the Artemis II astronauts speak about the photos they took as they made their loop around the Moon.

Take a look at some of the stunning images released by Nasa during their voyage:

Image source, NASA

Image source, NASA

Image source, NASA

Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent

Watching the Artemis II crew from launch to splashdown to today's press conference, I keep thinking back to another lunar fly‑round in a very different age.

In 1968, Apollo 8 was officially a test flight, sent to check out navigation and communications ahead of the first Moon landing. For many in my generation, it became something much bigger.

That mission gave us Earthrise: the first colour photograph of our planet, a jewelled blue marble hanging in the blackness above the grey lunar surface.

It helped kick‑start the modern environmental movement and made people feel, perhaps for the first time, that the Earth was fragile and needed friends.

Image source, NASA

Apollo 8’s crew read from the Book of Genesis on Christmas Eve and closed with a blessing “to all of you on the good Earth”, as one quarter of humanity listened.

They were speaking into a year marked by the Vietnam war and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy – a world that felt wretched to many adults, even as children like me were simply transfixed by the Moon on television.

Today, the parallels are hard to miss: a planet riven by conflict, environmental crisis and political division. Artemis II is again a loop around the Moon, again at a time when the news is often bleak.

In 1968 it was the astronauts that gave us hope of a better future. Perhaps the words from the next generation of lunar explorers can give us an echo of that hope and inspiration.

Image source, Reuters

Christina Koch has more words of advice, this time for whoever becomes the first woman to walk on the moon in the future.

Koch answers that being a superlative is humbling, but being part of a team is the main goal, and that should be put ahead of anything else.

"When the world tries to make the accomplishment something different than what it really is, which is a team accomplishment, you will know, and the things that you say will reflect how you really see it," she says.

With that, the press conference concludes.

Image source, AFP via Getty

A journalist asks what advice the astronauts have for the future Artemis crew who will land on the Moon.

Reid Wiseman says "you have got to invest in each other" and Victor Glover says "ask more questions".

Christina Koch tells future astronauts to "remember you are part of a team" and to "say congratulations" to the whole team every day.

"You're probably the last one that got added to this team," she says.

Jeremy Hansen goes technical with his answer, saying future astronauts should get to know parts of the spacecraft really well in case "you end up alone".

Artemis II came back to Earth hot, reaching temperatures about half that of the sun.

Mission commander Reid Wiseman is asked how the craft's heat shield fared on reentry.

He says they still need to see what Nasa says.

"We came in fast, we came in hot and I would tell you looking out the window, that whole way in, it was a very smooth ride," he says.

After their landing, the crew looked at the heat shield and it "looked wonderful to us," he says.

A Hollywood movie about Artemis? The astronauts are asked about that possibility - and what aspects of the mission would be the most important to get right.

Glover says it would have to be a series, not a movie, because there's so much to cover.

Koch says it would be important to convey "how much it meant to us to bring everyone along with us, and how much it meant to us to hear that the mission had an impact" on the world.

Image source, Reuters

A reporter asks how much longer the astronauts will be in post-mission care and whether they have found it useful in recovering from their journey.

Victor Glover takes this one, saying this was a short mission compared to a long stay on the International Space Station, for example, so the post-mission phase is not as long.

He says, however, that "it is important for us to run these processes out" because they are learning and making changes for future, longer missions.

Nasa has laid out its next steps - which is establishing some kind of permanent base on the Moon. The team is asked how realistic that goal is.

Christina Koch says she thinks it's possible and is excited for what comes next.

"There's just so many examples where we've shown that we can," Koch says. "All of the analysis that we do prior to missions, all of the talking that we do, all of the what ifs, just coming up with every possible operational work-around for anything you might encounter."

She adds: "Accomplishing the near impossible is exactly what we do".

Reid Wiseman adds that a lunar landing is not far off based on what he saw.

"It's not the leap I thought it was," he says. "If you had given us keys to a lander, we would've taken it down and landed on the Moon... It is absolutely doable and it is doable soon."

Next is a question on how the spacecraft worked compared to the simulator, and also compared to the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which Victor Glover previously piloted.

Glover says this craft "flew like a dream", describing it as an "immense privilege".

"The training worked, the team that came up with that plan was fantastic," he says.

Reid Wiseman addresses the Nasa team. He says the first day was "daunting" but it "really reminded me that when you are extremely highly trained and very prepared you can go knock that thing out".

The crew is asked which photo they would want to use if the US Postal Service wanted to make a stamp from the mission.

Glover says his pick would be the picture of the Earth where you can see the Northern Lights.

He adds that the crew isn't trying to take individual photo credits but says that specific picture was taken by Wiseman.

"It was not the first try," he says. "He made the adjustments to the camera and got a great picture."

Asked whether there was anything on the spacecraft they'd improve, Wiseman says the toilet was wonderful and worked fine, but the vent line did get jammed at one point.

Overall the spacecraft worked great and any issues were fixed quickly, like it being cold on the first couple days of the trip, he says.

There are lots of nuances that were found along the way, and the team has started debriefing on how to improve things going forward, Wiseman says.

You can read more about the astronauts' toilet trouble here.

A reporter asks a question about Nasa prioritising sending women and people of colour to the Moon, a mission that Nasa laid out before 2025.

That language has since been "removed from agency material", the reporter said, asking reporters whether they think Nasa should still adhere to that commitment.

Christina Koch says her understanding of the statement is that the Artemis campaign as a whole "will usher in an era where that is true" and that it "would happen naturally".

The astronaut corps, because of decisions made decades ago, "represents our entire country and our entire world in many ways", she adds.

"You don't have to try too hard to make that come true... you'd actually have to try harder to not make that true in the astronaut corps that we have," she says.

In between questions, mission pilot Victor Glover steps in to emphasise the importance of mental health. He says the crew had plenty of mental health support throughout the whole process.

"We have a team of operational psychologists and psychiatrists that help us skill up to be ready to accomplish things like this," Glover says. "We did not do that on our own."

The team is asked how they managed their mental health in space, and if they got any "me time".

"Everything we did was a four person thing," Victor Glover answers. "It was a team effort."

"When you're talking to your family, it did feel like being teleported out of the vehicle, but you teleported right back. And so we embraced that," Glover says.

Reid Wiseman adds that the team got "exceptionally good at communicating" with each other.