The Artemis II capsule and its four-member crew streaked through Earth's atmosphere and safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday after nearly 10 days in space, capping the first voyage by humans to the moon in over half a century.

NASA's gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, parachuted gently into calm seas off the Southern California coast shortly after 5 p.m. PT, concluding a mission that took the astronauts deeper into space than anyone had flown before.

The Artemis II flight, traveling a total of 694,392 miles (1,117,515 km) across two Earth orbits and a climactic lunar flyby some 252,000 miles away, was the debut crewed test flight in a series of Artemis missions that aim to return astronauts to the lunar surface starting in 2028.

The splashdown, about two hours before sunset, was carried by live video feed in a NASA webcast. "A perfect bull's eye splashdown for Integrity and its four astronauts," NASA commentator Rob Navias said moments after the landing.