In a touching video, astronaut Christina Koch of the Artemis II mission is seen joyfully reuniting with her dog following her momentous 10-day space journey.
The footage beautifully captures the dog’s excitement as it eagerly awaits Koch’s return, barking enthusiastically as she steps through the door to embrace her beloved pet.
This emotional reunion unfolded mere days after Artemis II made its splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, near San Diego, marking the mission’s completion around the moon.
The crew, consisting of three Americans and one Canadian, made history as the first group to journey to the moon since NASA’s Apollo missions over 50 years ago.
The Artemis II Orion capsule touched down in the Pacific on April 10, 2026. (NASA/AP)
The astronauts received a hero’s welcome at Ellington Field adjacent to NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Mission Control, following their ocean landing the previous evening.
The Artemis II crew members Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman appear on stage at the end of a crew return event at Ellington Field in Houston on April 11, 2026. (Michael Wyke/AP)
After reuniting with their spouses and children, Mission Specialist Koch, Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen took the stage inside the hangar, surrounded by space center workers and invited guests.
During Artemis II’s mission, the astronauts traveled deeper into space than the moon explorers of decades past and captured views of the lunar far side never seen by human eyes. A total solar eclipse added to the spectacle.
At the mission’s farthest point, the crew reached approximately 252,756 miles from Earth before looping behind the moon, surpassing Apollo 13’s distance record.
The mission also revealed a new perspective of Earth through an “Earthset” image, showing the planet setting behind the moon’s gray, cratered surface — echoing the iconic 1968 “Earthrise” photo taken during Apollo 8.
The Artemis II crew captured a view of Earth setting behind the moon during a lunar flyby on April 6, 2026. (NASA/AP)
“Honestly, what struck me wasn’t necessarily just Earth — it was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbed in the universe,” Koch said. “Planet Earth, you are a crew.”
Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen are the first humans to travel to the moon since Apollo 17 concluded NASA’s initial era of lunar exploration in 1972. A total of 24 astronauts journeyed to the moon during Apollo, including 12 who walked on its surface.
NASA has emphasized the importance of Artemis II’s success as it prepares for future missions. The agency is targeting Artemis III, which is expected to involve crewed operations with a lunar lander, followed by Artemis IV — a planned mission aiming to return astronauts to the moon’s surface near the lunar south pole, later this decade.
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