Artemis II crew nears record distance from Earth

HOUSTON, Texas April 6 – NASA’s Artemis II astronauts entered the moon’s gravitational sphere early Monday, preparing to pass over the shadowed far side and set a new human spaceflight distance record.

Flying in the Orion capsule since last week’s launch from Florida, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are scheduled to wake around 10:50 a.m. ET for their sixth mission day. By 7:05 p.m., they are expected to reach roughly 252,757 miles from Earth, surpassing the Apollo 13 record by 4,102 miles.

The crew will orbit about 4,000 miles above the lunar far side, briefly losing contact with NASA’s Deep Space Network as the moon blocks communications. During the six-hour flyby, they will photograph the silhouetted moon with sunlight filtering around its edges, creating what NASA describes as a rare lunar eclipse effect.

Advertisement

Astronauts will also capture a view of Earth rising from the lunar horizon, a unique perspective made possible by their record-breaking distance. Lunar scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will record observations as the crew describes the scene in real time.

Artemis II is the first crewed test flight of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon by 2028 and establish a long-term lunar presence as a stepping stone for future Mars missions.