After their historic lunar flyby, the crew safely splashed down in the Pacific.
NASA's Artemis II mission lifted off on April 1 at 6:35 p.m. ET from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The four-person crew completed a 695,081-mile, 10-day journey around the moon, also known as a lunar fly-by.
A "textbook" splashdown took place at 8:07 p.m. ET on Friday, April 10.
NASA Mission Control has regained contact with the Artemis II crew as the astronauts have swung around the far side of moon.
"Orion has technically begun its journey home," Mission Control stated.
While passing around the far side of the moon, the Orion spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth at 252,760 miles.
Shortly after losing communication with NASA, the Artemis II crew is making its closest approach to the moon.
Orion will be about 4,070 miles above the surface of the moon, according to NASA.
The Artemis II astronauts will be the first humans to see most of the far side of the moon, or the side not visible from Earth, since the Apollo missions.
"It turns out there's about 60% of the far side, I think, that has never been seen by human eyes because of the lighting conditions," Reid Wiseman, mission commander, said during a news conference on March 29. "Apollo always wanted that light on the front side of the moon for their landing and launch capability. ... We've seen it in satellite photos, but humans have never, ever seen that before. That's cool."
The Artemis II crew has reached the far side of the moon and has entered a communications blackout, NASA said.
The federal space agency said the communications blackout is planned and should last for about 40 minutes as Orion passes behind the moon.
The moon blocks the radio signals needed for Mission Control to maintain contact with Orion via the Deep Space Network, which is NASA's international array of giant radio antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions.
