Artemis II Recovery Training

Members from NASA’s Artemis Landing and Recovery team and the Department of War perform a final simulation of the Artemis II splashdown, called a just-in-time training, in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. The teams will work together to retrieve the Artemis II crew and Orion spacecraft following their return to Earth, and during the training the teams use the Crew Module Test Article, a full-scale mockup of the Orion spacecraft, to simulate as close as possible the conditions they can expect to encounter during splashdown of the Artemis II mission. NASA’s first crewed test flight in the Artemis campaign, the approximately 10-day Artemis II mission will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen around the Moon and farther than any humans have ever been from Earth.