Mashable

The NASA spacecraft carrying the four astronauts of Artemis II — Commander Reid Wiseman, 50, pilot Victor Glover, 49, Christina Koch, 47, and Jeremy Hansen, 50 — splashed down as planned off the coast of San Diego, California at 5:07pm Pacific time, in perfect weather. 

The safe return of the crew module, known during descent as Integrity, followed a nerve-wracking set of maneuvers during the mission's final half hour. 

Integrity had to separate from its service module, reorient itself for a "raise burn" that assisted reentry, and then had to weather an expected communications blackout of exactly six minutes as it reentered Earth's atmosphere.

SEE ALSO: After splashdown, brutal obstacle course awaits the Artemis II crew

Finally, a series of hair-raising parachute deployments concluded with the reveal of three iconic red and white parachutes.

On reaching the Pacific, the crew were reported as "green" — meaning all OK — and balloons deployed to help keep it afloat while Integrity powered down. The only snag, apparently, was was a non-working satellite phone.  

The astronauts remained in good spirits throughout the process, and had plenty of time to look around on the way down — and back up again.  

"The moon looks smaller than it did yesterday," Commander Wiseman noted to mission control some 23 minutes before splashdown. 

"Guess we'll just have to go back, then," responded Artemis II Chief Training Officer Jacki Mahaffey.  

The successful trip, which in looping around the moon went further from Earth than any humans have ever gone, was intended to prepare the hardware and the flight controllers for a moon landing in 2028, the first in more than a half-century. 

NASA also aims to use the moon to practice keeping humans alive in another world for extended periods before going to Mars. The U.S. also has an interest in landing on the moon again before China, which is close to achieving its own first human moon landing. 

Watch splashdown below, starting at about the 1 hour, 35 minute mark:

Elisha Sauers contributed to this report.

Once upon a time, streaming was considered a cheap alternative to cable. Now, depending on the services you subscribe to, "cheap" is hardly the word.

So far in 2026, several apps have undergone price increases, to the point where it's hard to keep up. That's where we come in. Here are the major streaming services that have hiked up their prices in 2026 so far.

SEE ALSO: What's new to streaming this week? (April 10, 2026) Prime Video

In March, Amazon changed the pricing structure for Prime Video, downgrading its cheaper options and locking important features behind its premium tier. The basic cost of Amazon Prime is still $14.99 a month or $139 a year, but that tier now only has access to 1080p streams on Prime Video.

To see 4K Prime Video content, you now need to pony up an extra $4.99/mo for a new "Ultra" tier that also gets rid of ads. Prime Video Ultra also allows for more simultaneous streams and more downloads. But at a 33% premium to the regular price, is it worth it in this economy?

Paramount Plus

Back in January, Paramount Plus upped the prices of both its available tiers by an additional $1 per month.

The cheaper, ad-supported Essential tier is now $9 monthly or $90 annually (up from $60), while the ad-free Premium tier is now $14 monthly or $140 annually (up from $120).

Crunchyroll

Anime fans are not immune to price hikes, either. Crunchyroll, the biggest name in anime streaming, increased its prices in February. The cheapest Fan tier went from $7.99 to $9.99 per month, the middle Mega Fan tier went from $11.99 to $13.99, and the Ultimate Fan tier went from $15.99 to $17.99.

This was the service's first real price hike in years, and it didn't come without some perks: Users can now download content to watch offline, for one thing. Sadly, the free, ad-supported Crunchyroll tier was killed earlier this year — so if you want to watch the best in anime, you'll probably have to pay.

Spotify

Spotify increased the price of its Premium plan from $11.99 to $12.99 per month in February. The cheaper Student plan went from $5.99 to $6.99. Duo and Family plan users saw $2 hikes. The former went from $16.99 to $18.99 per month, while the latter jumped from $19.99 to $21.99.

Sling TV

Sling TV is the only service on this list that was explicitly supposed to replace cable. Unfortunately, it also became the victim of a price hike earlier this year. There are too many tiers and permutations of Sling to list here, but the TL;DR is that prices went up by $4 per month for many users.

YouTube Premium

Last but not least is YouTube Premium, lowkey one of the better investments you can make if you really, truly hate ads on YouTube. This service got a $2 a month price increase, going fro $13.99 to $15.99 in April.

Sadly, there don't seem to be any extra perks to go along with this price increase.

Many of us can't go anywhere without our smartphones, and neither do the astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft.

The historic Artemis II mission sent four brave astronauts 248,655 miles away from Earth, a historic record — and the iPhone 17 Pro Max went with them. The Orion spacecraft, dubbed Integrity by its crew, is a marvel of engineering, but it's also home to some familiar terrestrial technology.

Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen brought all sorts of quirky items along with them to space (including at least one jar of Nutella). In addition to iPhones, the Artemis II crew is traveling with consumer gadgets from GoPro, Nikon, and Microsoft, all of which serve practical purposes aboard Orion.

The astronauts have been using the latest Apple flagship smartphone, the iPhone 17 Pro Max, to document life aboard Orion. They've sent back some unforgettable selfies with these smartphones.

NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows Credit: NASA

In addition, the astronauts have been using two Nikon D5 DSLR camera bodies, along with a variety of lenses, batteries, and camera accessories. Taking photographs of the lunar surface was one of the most important scientific objectives of the Artemis II mission, and the Nikon cameras have been essential for that task. (We've been marveling over the photographs all week long.)

Artemis II Pilot Victor Glover, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen configure their camera equipment. Credit: NASA

In addition, each of the astronauts is using a personal computing device, or a PCD. For this mission, the astronauts are using Microsoft Surface Pro tablets, for both important scientific work as well as more mundane tasks, like checking their email.

Finally, a variety of GoPro cameras are in use, both within the Orion cabin and on the exterior of the craft.

NASA documents state that the astronauts are using handheld GoPro action cameras to record the mission, and the footage will eventually appear in a Disney/NatGeo documentary.

In addition, specialized GoPro cameras have been installed on Orion's solar arrays.

A GoPro representative told Mashable that Artemis II astronauts are using HERO11 Black action cameras and a MAX1 360-degree camera onboard Orion. Outside the cabin, NASA placed modified HERO4 Black cameras on the solar arrays.

GoPro cameras have a reputation for durability, but these conditions are particularly extreme.

The Orion crew is scheduled to return to Earth on April 10, and the world has been following every step of the mission with bated breath.

Godspeed, Artemis II!

"Fetch" is never going to happen. But "moon joy" just might.

NASA began using the phrase "moon joy" all over its social media accounts as the Artemis II crew approached the moon this week. Now the agency has gone all in with a definition on the official NASA account on X, along with the ideal photo — its lunar adventurers looking adorably like the first fourple in space — leading into a video of moon joy moments.

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"The feeling of intense happiness and excitement that only comes from a mission to the moon" is how NASA defines moon joy (which sounds to us like it should be one word, but we'll wait for an official ruling from the AP Stylebook).

The phrase has been used several times throughout the Artemis II mission. The first use NASA posted was on Sunday, April 5: a clip of the mission control communicator calmly replying to a litany of excited identification of lunar locations from astronaut Reid Wiseman aboard Orion.

"Copy," mission control says with a chuckle. "Moon joy."

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One commenter on X called the phrase "the most perfectly understated response to astronauts losing their minds over seeing the moon up close for the first time." (Which calls to mind this classic 1969 moon landing story from the Onion — featuring a mission control transcript that seems closer to how the Apollo team would have expressed its moon joy if they hadn't been so professionally understated.)

NASA knew a good meme when it saw one. When the astronauts were woken up on Monday, mission control told them, "Our room is buzzing with moon joy." When the Artemis II astronauts viewed a solar eclipse that same day, it also qualified as moon joy — because the eclipse was one only they could see.

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Moon joy is infectious, it turns out — even reaching the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, according to a live NASA broadcast of a ship-to-ship call between Orion and the ISS.

"We can tell that you guys are definitely experiencing moon joy," Jessica Meir, commander of the ISS Crew-12 mission, told the Artemis II crew, "and I feel like even we are experiencing moon joy right now."

The ISS's moon joy manifested, according to Meir, in a particularly nerdy jape.

At the moment Orion set the new record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth on Monday, her crew went to the far end of the station to claim that they were the farthest humans away from them at that moment — presumably since the ISS happened to be on the opposite side of the Earth at the time.

Even Rise, the official Artemis II mission mascot, got in on the moon joy meme on Wednesday, turning in the perfect made-for-Hollywood cute character catchphrase.

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Of course, NASA couldn't make moon joy happen all on its own. Luckily, back on Earth, moon joy is already a thing — because ironically, and unlike fetch in Mean Girls, it's not happening in a vacuum.

We noted the unusually unified, unabashedly earnest reactions to last week's Artemis II launch. That sense of wonder and delight has only grown, and #moonjoy has become the positive hashtag for an otherwise uniformly terrible year.

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How long moon joy lasts, and whether it stays with us for NASA's planned moon landing in 2028, is anyone's guess. But this week at least, it was a real and global thing — and that is, in itself, pretty fetch.

Elisha Sauers contributed to this report.