The Artemis II crew is packing up to prepare for landing after a successful loop around the moon.

The capsule is pointed back toward Earth, with a splashdown planned for tomorrow around 8:06 pm ET in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California, Nasa officials say.

“All of the science equipment and cameras and tablets and reference material that got unstowed in support of the flyby, we have to put that all away,” Nasa flight director Rick Henfling said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

“We have to pack up our suitcases and get ready to come home.”

The historic mission broke the distance record Monday as the farthest humans have flown from Earth, reaching 406,771 kilometres and beating the previous record of 400,171 kilometres set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

The astronauts also got to name two lunar craters. They proposed Integrity, their capsule’s name, and Carroll, in honour of Wiseman’s late wife who died of cancer in 2020.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in mission control” when the names were announced, Henfling said.

Crew members spent seven hours making observations during the lunar flyby and reported seeing details on the moon’s surface as well as Mars, Venus and Saturn in the distance.

Nasa geologist Kelsey Young said Tuesday there were “audible screams of delight” in the science room when the astronauts mentioned seeing impact flashes, which are caused by “micro-meteorites” hitting the moon’s surface.

“Listening to the level of scientific discourse that the crew was having yesterday was incredibly inspiring,” she said.