SAN DIEGO (AFP) — Their mission around the Moon is not expected until September 2025 at the earliest, but the four astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission are already preparing for their splashdown return.

Over the past week, the three Americans and one Canadian chosen for the historic Moon mission have been training at sea with the US Navy off the coast of California.

“This is crazy. This is the stuff of movies, and we’re living it every day,” said veteran NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander, Wednesday at the San Diego Naval Base.

The night before, the quartet had been on a small inflatable raft bobbing in the Pacific Ocean.

Aboard a huge amphibious assault ship, hundreds of sailors, divers and pilots worked through the process of retrieving the space explorers, in a critical dress rehearsal for the mission’s final leg.

Wiseman, 48, and his three colleagues will become the first humans to travel to the Moon since the Apollo program ended over 50 years ago.

If all goes well, they will fly around the Moon during a 10-day expedition aboard an Orion capsule, ending with a parachute-assisted descent into the sea.

How to handle a storm, what to do if an astronaut is injured — these were just part of the detailed training.

NASA deployed a life-size replica of Orion for the rehearsal, which was nicknamed “Darth Vader” for its resemblance to the “Star Wars” character’s helmet.

“We continuously think about what we’re gonna do” Lily Villareal, the NASA official overseeing the return phase of the mission, told AFP. “We have to prepare for every single scenario.”

With the Artemis program, humans are not just trying to return to the Moon, but to “stay” there with a lasting presence, she said.

While Artemis II will fly around the Moon, the program’s third mission — scheduled for the end of 2026 but facing possible further delays — intends to land humans on the lunar surface.

NASA’s lofty aim will then be to dispatch missions lasting several weeks, setting up a base on the lunar surface as well as an orbiting space station, with an eye toward manned trips to Mars.