The history-making Artemis II astronauts have safely returned to Earth after a “textbook touchdown”, bringing their historic 10-day mission to a close and erasing all previous lunar records in a feat many say will take a long time to rival.

The crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday at 00:07 GMT (20:07 EDT), which is exactly 1.07am Saturday morning in Nigeria with commander Reid Wiseman confirming his team is healthy.

“This is the start of a new era of human space exploration,” Nasa says, after the crew’s return.

The four astronauts are “happy and healthy”, an official for the space agency says at a news conference

The crew successfully re-entered the atmosphere after a routine but nerve-wracking six-minute communications blackout, a moment they simply ‘got lost’ from humanity.

The crew left the earth on April 1 with a clear mission to explore the moon in a manner never before witnessed. On 6 April, the spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth – 406,771km (252,756 miles) – during the lunar flyby, breaking the previous record for the furthest mission humans have ever travelled into space.

It was a period of nerve-wracking emotion and expectation of the demonstration of the triumph of man over the solar system.

Below is a snap profile of the four crew members:

Reid Wiseman, the mission commander, is a former US Navy pilot and test pilot. He became a Nasa astronaut in 2009 and spent 165 days on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2014.

Victor Glover, pilot of the ship, lived on the ISS from November 2020 to May 2021 and was also the pilot of SpaceX Crew-1. He holds three master’s degrees and is now the first Black astronaut to fly on a Moon mission.

Christina Koch holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman (328 days on the International Space Station) after becoming an astronaut in 2013. She is now the first woman to travel around the Moon.

Jeremy Hansen, is the first Canadian to go to the Moon. He previously lived underwater for seven days as part of his aquanaut work with NASA.