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NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Research Continues on Earth

Dressed in a white space suit—with hands gloved, feet booted and head in a helmet with a clear visor—Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover walks on a wide green treadmill. His suit is harnessed to a black machine that is taking the weight off Glover such that, while in the suit, he experiences forces equivalent to lunar gravity. Two people wearing casual clothes and blue hard hats stand in the background, waiting to support Glover and the experiment, should the need arise. Behind Glover are crisscrossing blue iron beams that stretch to a high ceiling in this industrial building at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover walks on a treadmill while in a space suit harnessed to NASA’s Active Response Gravity Offload System at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Glover is simulating a walk on a planetary surface while in a suit that has been offloaded to lunar gravity. Artemis II astronauts completed this and other suited tasks before their mission launched and within a few days of landing, giving researchers a chance to assess how quickly upon landing crews’ bodies adapt to a different gravity. Results will help scientists better understand how soon after landing crews can complete mission-critical tasks on the surface of the Moon or Mars.

NASA/Robert Markowitz

Since NASA’s Artemis II crew members safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10 after their record-setting mission around the Moon, science teams have been busy collecting more data and combing through observations collected on the test flight. Results from these science investigations will help support safe human exploration of deep space and provide a blueprint for how future missions will conduct science on the lunar surface as NASA builds a Moon Base and develops an enduring human presence there.

Postflight crew health, performance data

In the hours, days, and weeks after landing, the Artemis II crew members, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, contributed critical data to help the agency understand how the human body reacts to spaceflight. Collecting this data as soon as possible after landing was important to understand how the body adapts from microgravity to Earth’s gravity. The data will inform NASA’s understanding of how quickly crews can complete mission-critical tasks after landing on a planetary surface like the Moon or Mars, where there won’t be landing support personnel to assist.

Within a day of splashdown, researchers collected a suite of data for the Artemis II Spaceflight Standard Measures study, which is part of a larger effort across the astronaut corps to gather a baseline set of health measurements on blood pressure, heart rate, eye health, and motor control. Crew members also completed a mini obstacle course, which included lying down, standing up, unfurling a rope ladder, ladder climbing, and more, to assess how their bodies were adapting to Earth’s gravity.

Once the crew returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, researchers guided them through further medical check-ups and tests of motor control. Over the next several days, the crew completed obstacle courses wearing spacesuits offloaded to lunar gravity, which is roughly one-sixth the force of Earth’s gravity. Researchers are now analyzing this data to gain insight into how crews may perform as they adapt to the gravity of a planetary surface.

As part of the Immune Biomarkers study, researchers are comparing blood and saliva samples collected after the Artemis II splashdown with samples collected preflight and during the mission. Among other topics, the study investigates whether and how dormant viruses reawaken in astronauts’ bodies while in space.

Some crew members completed postflight cognition tests and a simulated manual spacecraft docking task to assess motor control for the ARCHeR (Artemis Research for Crew Health & Readiness) study. This, combined with data collected through a wrist-worn device while crew members were in space, is used to understand the effect of space hazards on well-being and performance.

Initial data collections for Artemis II health studies concluded 45 days after splashdown. However, medical teams will continually monitor astronaut health throughout the Artemis II crew members’ lifetimes.

Once this data is processed and anonymized, information will be available for scientists to study the effects of spaceflight via a request to NASA’s Life Sciences Data Archive. The results from this work could lead to new technologies and studies that help predict the adaptability of crews on future missions to the Moon and Mars.

Analyzing astronaut-derived organ chips flown around Moon

A person wearing blue gloves holds a small cylindrical organ chip.

A scientist handles AVATAR organ chips following their journey around the Moon aboard Orion. The chips contain cells from each astronaut and are being prepared for detailed analysis.

NASA

Organ chips from NASA’s AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) investigation are being analyzed at chip developer Emulate’s laboratory in Boston. The organ chips included bone marrow cells from each Artemis II astronaut. They flew around the Moon with the astronauts, and now researchers are studying these organ chips to determine how deep space radiation and microgravity affect human health at the molecular level.

Scientists are comparing the chips flown aboard the spacecraft to ground controls and crew blood samples using advanced techniques, including single-cell RNA sequencing. The analysis will characterize how organ chips model individual responses to spaceflight, which is data that could allow NASA to send future astronauts’ AVATAR chips ahead on missions to develop personalized medical kits. The researchers plan to share early findings at scientific conferences while full analysis continues.

Lunar imagery, audio for data release

A large operations room filled with about two dozen staff members seated at computer workstations. Rows of desks with multiple monitors face a central area where a person sitting at a glass-topped desk appears to be speaking to the group. Large screens mounted on the walls display space-related imagery and data. Several people are looking towards a large screen hanging on a wall on the right of the image, while others work at their computers. The room is brightly lit, with blue accents along the walls, creating the atmosphere of a space operations or flight control center.

In this April 3, 2026, image, the Artemis II lunar science team is shown working in the Science Evaluation Room in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The team is putting together a plan of science observations for the Artemis II crew, which was headed toward the Moon aboard Orion. As they passed the Moon at closest approach on April 6, the crew applied the geology skills they learned in the classroom and in Moon-like environments on Earth as they photographed and described nuances of geologic features such as impact craters, ancient lava flows, and surface cracks and ridges. The crew noted differences in color, brightness, and texture — details that provide clues to surface composition and history.

NASA/Bill Stafford

On April 6, the Artemis II crew members studied features on and around the Moon for nearly seven hours during Orion’s closest approach to the lunar surface. Their work was guided by a minute-by-minute observation plan developed by the Artemis II lunar science team.

Scientists are reviewing the data collected from the mission, which includes images, video, and audio files, to release a report of their initial data interpretations later this year. The report will cover observations of impact flashes, variations in color on the lunar surface, and the shape and texture of faults and ridges. The team also will publish a report on how Artemis II lunar science observations were planned, organized, and executed for the benefit of future Artemis missions.

NASA will publish more than 100 science-related audio recordings with transcripts, as well as approximately 11,500 Earth and Moon image and video files from the mission science campaign, with accompanying data. While many of these images already are public, these records will be available through NASA’s Planetary Data System, a public archive of data from all of NASA’s planetary missions. To get the data ready, the team is converting files into standard formats that anyone can easily open and add information to make the data searchable in NASA’s archive for generations to come.

For more information on NASA’s Artemis II science efforts, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis-ii-science/

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser

Headquarters, Washington

240-285-5155 / 240-419-1732

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