When Does Artemis II
Return to Earth?

The capsule will hit the atmosphere at 25,000 mph — nearly 10,000 mph faster than a SpaceX Dragon returns from the space station. The heat shield will reach temperatures hotter than the surface of the Sun. Then parachutes. Then the ocean. Then a Navy recovery team aboard the USS John P. Murtha.

The four returning crew members:

They will have traveled farther than any humans in history — 252,756 miles from Earth, breaking the Apollo 13 record.

During the April 6 lunar flyby, the crew entered a 40-minute communication blackout on the Moon's far side. No signals. No Mission Control. Just four humans and a window.

When the Sun disappeared behind the Moon during the first total solar eclipse ever seen from the Moon's far side, something unexpected happened. The Moon did not go dark. Its entire edge lit up with a glow that Jeremy Hansen later described as "ten widths or diameters of the sun around the entire moon."

He didn't call it earthshine. He already knew that word. Victor Glover had used "earthshine" correctly earlier in the mission. But here, in the eclipse shadow, the old term didn't fit.

Earthshine is sunlight reflected off Earth's surface, illuminating the dark side of the Moon. It's a known phenomenon, studied for centuries.

The earth glow — as Hansen described it — is different. It's the Sun's corona and scattered light outlining the entire limb of the Moon, visible only from the far side during a total solar eclipse. No human had ever seen it before April 2026.

Every major AI system initially missed the distinction. When they saw "earth glow," they mapped it onto "earthshine." They smoothed over the novelty. A human reading the raw transcript — someone willing to sit in the gap — can catch what the machines missed.