Artemis II's Lunar Flyby is important for present and future generations

This video grab made from a NASA livestream shows Artemis II crewmembers (in orange suits) being extracted from their spacecraft after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California, on April 10, 2026. [AFP]

You probably saw the excitement, and even some bewilderment in the faces of the four astronauts who had just completed a 1.1 million-kilometre journey involving a moon flyby in the Artemis II mission. Their voices crackled as they recounted the nine-day voyage, a first since 1972, and the surreal experience of blasting beyond the Earth's atmosphere, past the International Space Station, and hundreds of thousands of kilometres into an airless void of pitch blackness. They were tired, exhilarated, awed; they had not yet absorbed it fully, they admitted, when they addressed NASA's Johnson Space Center.