Artemis II crew sets record for farthest distance traveled from Earth

NASA’s Artemis II mission made history on Monday by sending humans farther from Earth than ever before.

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The four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft, NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, came within about 4,070 miles of the moon’s surface, nearly 252,760 miles from Earth. That broke Apollo 13’s record of 248,655 miles, set in 1970.

“Today, for all humanity, you’re pushing beyond that frontier,” said Jenni Gibbons, the capsule communicator from Mission Control.

“As we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from Planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration,” Wiseman said. “We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear, but we most importantly choose this moment, to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.”

Orion launched Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a 10-day mission around the moon and back, setting the stage for future missions aimed at a permanent lunar presence.

Mission Control expects to temporarily lose communication with the crew on Monday evening, as Orion passes behind the moon, the space agency said.