NASA’s moon spacecraft returns to Florida as Artemis III hardware is prepared for next launch
Teams at Kennedy Space Center will analyze how Orion performed during the Artemis II moon flyby.
NASA has released new footage of the Artemis II launch on April 1, filmed by onboard cameras built to endure the rocket’s intense heat, vibration and force during the liftoff.
NASA’s Orion capsule has returned to Kennedy Space Center in Florida less than a month after its historic moon flyby with four astronauts, as additional rocket hardware arrives for the next phase of the agency’s push to return humans to the moon.
Orion launched on April 1, carrying NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on the first crewed lunar flyby mission in more than 50 years. After traveling nearly 700,000 miles through space, the mission ended April 10 with a successful splashdown off the coast of San Diego.
The Artemis II Orion spacecraft arrived Tuesday at Kennedy’s Multi-Processing Payload Facility, where teams will remove payloads from the crew module and retrieve flight data to evaluate the spacecraft’s performance.
NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the agency’s Artemis II mission arrives at the Kennedy Space Center Multi Payload Processing Facility in Florida, on Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/Tiffany Fairley)
“Orion’s heat shield and other elements will be removed for extensive analysis, and remaining hazards such as excess propellant will be offloaded,” NASA said.
At the same time, crews at Kennedy are preparing for Artemis III. The Space Launch System core stage for that mission recently arrived and will be moved into the Vehicle Assembly Building, where it will be lifted into High Bay 2 for stacking.
NASA said the first shipment of booster motor segments for Artemis III arrived earlier this month. The segments will form the rocket’s twin solid boosters, which generate more than 75% of the thrust at liftoff. A second shipment is expected this summer.
Artemis III is scheduled to launch next year and will not be another lunar flyby. Instead, astronauts will travel to Earth orbit aboard Orion to test rendezvous and docking with a commercial spacecraft, a key step toward landing humans on the moon during Artemis IV, currently targeted for 2028.
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