Ever since the launch of Artemis II, and all during the loop around the moon, the largest question looming for those of us who remember watching Space Shuttle Columbia break up in fiery streaks across the sky was “will they make it back in one piece?”

Yesterday evening, the Artemis crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean in what NASA referred to during the livestream as a “textbook” re-entry.

The splashdown, which happened in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. EDT / 5:07 p.m. PDT, followed a harrowing and dangerous reentry, where NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, traveled at speeds up to 25,000 mph ‒ possibly faster than humans have ever traveled.

“What a journey,” Wiseman said as he bobbed in the Pacific Ocean inside the Orion capsule just minutes after the safe return.

The U.S. Navy then helped extract the crew from the capsule, hoisted them individually into helicopters and took them to the deck of the USS John P. Murtha, which acted as the recovery ship for the Orion. Next stop for the astronauts: Mission Control in Houston.

Artemis II marked a historic moment as the first crewed mission of NASA’s Artemis program to travel beyond low Earth orbit returned home, traveling farther and likely faster than any human has before.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who has his own space resume, was thrilled to be on hand to greet the returning Artemis crew.

“We are back in the business of sending astronauts back to the moon. This is just the beginning,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said from the deck of USS John P. Murtha, which is acting as the recovery ship for the Orion spacecraft.

“I’m honestly still at a loss for words,” a jubilant Isaacman said. “The childhood Jared right now can’t believe what I just saw.”

And splashdown!

America is back in the business of sending astronauts to the Moon and bringing them home safely.
Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy did an outstanding job. These talented astronauts inspired the world and represented their space agencies and nations as… pic.twitter.com/wOioBBvGhX

— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) April 11, 2026

The Artemis crew was thrilled to be back home on Earth.

On the helicopter leaving the ship right now. This planet is impossibly beautiful from every altitude I’ve seen it…surface to 250,000 miles pic.twitter.com/qnyTQQ6OkB

— Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid) April 11, 2026

Even if there is a reason they needed a lot of help getting around after splashdown, and a reason why extraction from the capsule takes so long.

The Artemis II astronauts were filmed struggling to walk after experiencing Earth’s gravity again following their historic mission to the moon.

… as the courageous explorers exited the chopper and made their way across the deck, it was apparent that they were experiencing some locomotive difficulties due to their 9-day stint in microgravity.

As the footage showed, all four team members had to be supported by an aid on each side. All the while, a third assistant pushed a wheelchair behind them in case any of the crewmembers suddenly became weak in the knees.

Thankfully, the astronauts were able to make their post space-walk sans wheelchair assistance. One even strode across the platform unaided, waving triumphantly at employees aboard the vessel — not too shoddy given they literally went to the moon and back. NASA said they were in “excellent shape” following their arrival back on Earth.

Meanwhile, commander Reid Wiseman reported that all four crewmembers were “stable” and “green,” indicating they were in good shape, CNN reported.

Extended stints in microgravity can cause a host of issues during and following the return.

Something that we all take for granted – gravity – is something that the Artemis crew will have to get used to again for the next several days. Weird, and often beyond our imagination (especially since a majority of science fiction neatly glosses over that reality with “artificial gravity”), but so much of space travel, and extended time in space, is a dream to most people on Earth.

To see those dreams on the verge of becoming a reality for some is just mind-blowing. What’s also mind blowing? The whining.

This amazing feat of engineering, exploration, and human spirit is galvanizing, it’s a white pill for all of us who see humanity as a race of dreamers. Sure, we’re imperfect, but look at what we can pull off with a little ingenuity and one hell of a lot of moxie!

This mission is big enough and daring enough to give us all hope in the future of our species. While political antagonism and petty identitarian squabbles seek to bring us to our knees, the astronauts of Artemis II uplift us—and lift us higher than many of us ever thought we would go again.

So why do so many pundits and talking heads seek to squash the impact of Artemis II? Writing in The Guardian, Zoe Williams said “Let’s stop going into space. There’s nothing to see and no one to talk to.” And that was just the title. Her opening sentence was a gut punch to anyone who sees our mission as human beings to find out everything we can know about life, the universe, and everything.

“It is absolutely self-evident to me that space exploration is pointless, and the more urgent the crises besetting this planet we live on, the more pointless it becomes,” she said. She went on to say “There’s nothing out there except planets infinitely less beautiful than this one we live on.” Of course, she says this without knowing at all if that’s true, and without any consideration for what innovation space exploration holds.

“All that seems pretty uncontroversial,” she writes, “and I almost never mention it, except for when astronauts yet again pointlessly go into space, as with the latest moon mission.” She may think it’s pointless, but that’s because she has the wrong goals. She concludes with “Seriously, Nasa, can you not just knock it off? Hasn’t the US, of all nations, got bigger things to worry about?”

That’s entirely the wrong perspective. What bigger things? What is bigger than space? Solving social issues? Fixing homelessness? Dealing with the national debt? Wars? No, none of this is “bigger,” none of this is more important, and certainly none of those things is more essential to the stuff of life than imagination, dreams, and curiosity.

And Williams is not the only one. Ars Technica complains that the Artemis II mission didn’t “tell us anything new.” The outlet complains that the whole point of the trip was the public relations value.

Which is the sour grapes way of saying that mission told us that we can, in fact, do this. Ideally, Artemis II inspires a whole new generation of astronauts who bring their faith, their hopes, their dreams, and their know-how into the great beyond. Our dreams should soar as far into the unknown as we can dream them.

That’s how we know who we are. We dream, we tell each other about our dreams, then we dream the biggest dreams we can dream together.

Without dreams, without goals, without lofty aims to strive toward, humans have nothing to work for. Anyone with a heart was deeply touched by the multiple bonding moments displayed by the Artemis crew, including the emotional moment when the crew asked to name a crater after commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll.

In an emotional moment broadcast live from the Orion spacecraft, the Artemis II crew chose to name a Moon crater “Carroll" after commander Reid Wiseman's wife, who died of cancer in 2020.

“It's a bright spot on the Moon. And we would like to call it Carroll." pic.twitter.com/3p220FdaV7

— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 6, 2026

It is those deeply human moments in space that capture our imagination and our emotions, and to throw cold water on it by complaining that it costs too much (but California’s high speed rail to nowhere doesn’t?) or is too boring because it’s all been done before (again, tell anyone with living memory of the Challenger or Columbia disasters that space travel is low-risk and boring because it’s been done before) is to deny humans the chance to grow and stretch the boundaries and limits of what has come before.

Humans are going to live on the moon someday, and we will see it in our lifetimes, if the current timeline holds true. What a moment for American ingenuity, for human imagination, and for all mankind. Thanks, Artemis II, for showing us all, especially the younger generations, that our dreams of space are still reality.

Featured image: the crew of Artemis II after splashdown and recovery of astronauts and capsule, photo by NASA/Bill Ingalls via NASA Flickr, cropped, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0