MISSION FILM NASA ARTEMIS II · FLOWN APR 1–10, 2026

Around the Moon, and back.

Four people. Ten days. One continuous trajectory — crosswalked, phase by phase, with the physics that kept them alive.

Flown & recovered ✓
Splashdown 8:07 PM EDT
Pacific · Apr 10 2026

On the evening of April 1, 2026, a spacecraft its crew had named Integrity left Earth carrying Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen — humanity's first voyage beyond low Earth orbit in more than fifty years.

They flew a free-return trajectory: one engine burn near Earth committed them to a path that used the Moon's own gravity to sling them home. No lunar orbit, no landing — a ten-day proving flight for the Space Launch System and Orion, clearing the way for the landing missions to follow. What follows is that flight — first end to end on a single continuous trajectory, then crosswalked phase by phase into the physics that flew it.

10DAYSLaunch to splashdown

4Crew · 3 NASA + 1 CSA

252,756MIFarthest humans have ever been

36Equations in the physics layer

THE FULL JOURNEY ONE CONTINUOUS PATH · FD 1–10

The whole flight,
one line.

Every phase of the mission lives somewhere on this line.

Watch the spacecraft fly the official mission profile end to end: up from LC-39B into a first checkout orbit, one lap of a roughly 24-hour high-Earth ellipse with the proximity-ops demo, the TLI burn at perigee, four days of outbound coast, the hairpin around the Moon's far side — the farthest point humans have ever reached — the free-return fall home, then reentry and splashdown in the Pacific. The lettered badges are the physics phases — the same A–G stamped on every equation below. Each phase section that follows re-lights its own segment of this exact same line.

Geometry is schematic — distances not to scale. The real Moon is ~30 Earth-diameters away. On phones, swipe the maps sideways to pan.

FND · Physics Core A · Launch & Ascent B · Earth Orbit C · Translunar Transfer D · Lunar Flyby E · Free Return F · Reentry G · Descent & Splashdown CTRL · Attitude Control

PHASE FND RUNS UNDER EVERY SEGMENT

Physics Core

Seven laws that never switched off.

Kinematics, Newton’s second law, momentum, work, electrical potential, centripetal acceleration — the substrate every phase-specific equation stands on. On the crosswalk, the Physics Core doesn’t own one segment of the line: it owns the whole line.

EQ.1 Displacement EQ.2 Velocity EQ.3 Newton’s 2nd law EQ.4 Momentum EQ.5 Voltage EQ.6 Work EQ.7 Centripetal accel.

PHASE A FD 1 · KENNEDY LC-39B

Launch &
Ascent

For two minutes, the night over Florida turned to daylight.

At 6:35 p.m. EDT, twin solid rocket boosters lit first — joined by four RS-25 engines already at full power — and the Space Launch System left the pad on roughly 8.8 million pounds of thrust. The vehicle punched through max-Q, where dynamic pressure peaks, shed its boosters, then its core stage, and delivered Orion and its crew to the edge of space.

8.8MLBFLiftoff thrust

2+4Boosters + RS-25 engines

6:35PM EDTLiftoff · Apr 1, 2026

EQ.8 Thrust EQ.9 Specific impulse EQ.11 Dynamic pressure EQ.12 Drag

PHASE B FD 1–2 · CHECKOUT + TLI

Earth Orbit

One burn, and Earth stopped being the whole world.

From a brief first checkout orbit, the upper stage boosted Orion into a roughly 24-hour high-Earth ellipse. There the crew hand-flew a proximity-operations demo with that spent stage, proving Orion as a ship. Then, swinging back through perigee, Orion's own service module fired the translunar injection burn — raising its orbital energy past return and committing four people to the Moon.

24,500≈ MPH after TLI (conceptual)

1Burn to commit to the Moon

EQ.10 Rocket equation EQ.18 Orbital energy EQ.22 Orbital period EQ.27 Burn update

PHASE C FD 2–5 · OUTBOUND COAST

Translunar
Transfer

Three days of falling, in perfect silence.

No engines fired for most of the transfer. Orion coasted on the momentum of one burn while Earth's and the Moon's gravity pulled against each other for the ship — the crew exercising on a flywheel device, running health and life-support science, and photographing a planet that grew smaller by the hour.

FLIGHT DAY 2Still home-sized

FLIGHT DAY 3An ornament

FLIGHT DAY 5A marble

EQ.17 Earth–Moon gravity EQ.20 Vis-viva EQ.23 Sphere of influence

PHASE D FD 6 · APR 6 · LUNAR FAR SIDE

Lunar Flyby

For forty minutes, no one on Earth could hear them.

Orion swept 4,067 miles above the far side of the Moon — the Moon itself blocking every radio path home. On the way around, the crew watched an Earthset, an Earthrise, and a solar eclipse no one else could see. And at the far edge of the swing, they were farther from Earth than any humans have ever been.

● LOS — SIGNAL LOST · 40 MIN

252,756MILES FROM HOME

EQ.24 Periapsis speed EQ.25 Eccentricity EQ.26 Turning angle

PHASE E FD 7–9 · GRAVITY STEERING

Free Return

Gravity had been steering them home since the flyby.

That's the whole point of a free-return trajectory: the geometry chosen before launch meant the Moon's gravity bent Orion onto a path that already intersected Earth's atmosphere. Even with total engine failure, they were coming home. Small trajectory-correction burns merely sharpened the aim on the entry corridor.

0Burns required to return

±Small corrections only

EQ.17 Combined gravity EQ.21 Angular momentum EQ.27 Burn update

PHASE F FD 10 · ENTRY INTERFACE

Reentry

Six minutes where physics did all the talking.

The crew module cut loose from its service module and hit the top of the atmosphere at 400,000 feet, moving at roughly Mach 35. Air compressed into plasma hotter than the surface arc of a welding torch; the AVCOAT heat shield charred away by design, and for about six minutes the plasma sheath blacked out every radio call while lift, drag, and entry angle decided everything.

MACH 35≈ 24,500 mph at interface

5,000°FHeat-shield surface

6MINPlasma blackout

EQ.33 Flight-path angle EQ.34 Stagnation heating EQ.13 Lift

PHASE G FD 10 · PACIFIC, OFF SAN DIEGO

Descent &
Splashdown

The Pacific, the ship, and four people back from the Moon.

A sequence of eleven parachutes — drogues, pilots, and three mains — took Orion from screaming reentry to a gentle 20 mph splashdown at 8:07 p.m. EDT. Navy divers reached the capsule within the hour, and the crew came aboard USS John P. Murtha — the first Navy-led recovery of NASA astronauts since Apollo–Soyuz in 1975.

20MPHUnder three mains

8:07PM EDTSplashdown · Apr 10, 2026

11Parachutes in sequence

EQ.35 Terminal speed EQ.36 Buoyancy EQ.12 Drag

PHASE CTRL RUNS UNDER EVERY SEGMENT

Attitude Control

Pointing the ship was a full-time job.

Every burn, every comms pass, every thermal roll and every window shot in the phases above required rotating the spacecraft: off-center thruster firings produced torque, and moment of inertia set how quickly Integrity answered. Like the Physics Core, attitude control owns no single segment — it ran from the pad to the Pacific.

EQ.28 Torque EQ.29 Rotational dynamics

POST-FLIGHT THE PHYSICS LAYER

36 equations flew this mission

Every equation NASA-grade sources credit with governing part of this flight — from Newton's second law to buoyancy in the Pacific — stamped with the same phase letters as the trajectory crosswalk above. Search, filter, or tap any EQ pill in the phases above to jump straight to its card.

THE CREW ORION · "INTEGRITY"

The four.

Commander · NASA

Reid Wiseman

Naval aviator and former Chief of the Astronaut Office. Previously flew as a flight engineer on ISS Expedition 41. The oldest person to travel beyond low Earth orbit.

Pilot · NASA

Victor Glover

Naval aviator with thousands of flight hours. Piloted SpaceX Crew-1 and served as an ISS flight engineer. The first person of color to fly beyond low Earth orbit.

Mission Specialist · NASA

Christina Koch

Electrical engineer who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. The first woman to fly beyond low Earth orbit.

Mission Specialist · CSA

Jeremy Hansen

Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot. The first Canadian — and the first non-American — ever assigned to a lunar mission.

GROUNDED IN THE RECORD

Sources

Mission facts and timeline follow NASA's Artemis II reporting; equation families are grounded in NASA Glenn, OpenStax, and NASA technical references. Independent educational project — not an official NASA product.

NASA — Artemis II mission overview↗ NASA — Artemis II news & updates↗ NASA — Artemis II multimedia archive↗ NASA SVS — reference trajectory visualization↗ NASA Glenn — rocket thrust↗ NASA Glenn — specific impulse↗ NASA Glenn — ideal rocket equation↗ NASA Glenn — dynamic pressure↗ NASA Glenn — drag equation↗ OpenStax — constant acceleration↗ OpenStax — work↗ OpenStax — electric potential↗ NASA NTRS — orbital mechanics↗ NASA NTRS — Sutton–Graves heating report↗

The whole flight,one line.