What new images of the moon tell NASA

NASA's Artemis II crew conducted critical systems testing inside their Orion capsule at the Johnson Space Center in Houston this week, in preparation for their scheduled splashdown off the coast of San Diego on Friday. The final pre-landing checks represent the culmination of the mission's operational phase, ensuring all spacecraft systems are functioning correctly before the crew returns to Earth. These procedures are standard protocol for human spaceflight missions, designed to verify communication systems, life support equipment, and landing sequence controls while the astronauts remain in a controlled ground-based environment that simulates space conditions. The testing comes as NASA continues to analyze new lunar imagery and data collected during the uncrewed Artemis I mission, which orbited the moon in late 2022. These images provide crucial information about potential landing sites, surface conditions, and radiation environments that will inform future Artemis missions aiming to establish sustainable human presence on the lunar surface. The combination of crew training and ongoing data analysis demonstrates NASA's integrated approach to returning humans to the moon after more than 50 years. CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reported from Houston that the Artemis II astronauts—NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen—have been undergoing extensive training for their historic journey. As the first crewed mission of the Artemis program, their flight around the moon will test all systems with humans aboard before Artemis III attempts a lunar landing. The successful splashdown on Friday would mark a major milestone in proving Orion's capabilities for deep space exploration and keeping NASA on track for its goal of landing astronauts near the lunar south pole by 2026.