Artemis II Crew Travels Further From Earth Than Anyone Before

OUTER SPACE – Four astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission are on their way back home after a dramatic lunar flyby that saw them travel further from Earth than any other humans, beating a record held by the Apollo 13 mission since 1970.

The crew lost contact with the Earth, as expected, for 40 minutes as they travelled behind the moon.

Soon afterwards the spacecraft dipped to within a few thousand miles of the lunar surface and the crew witnessed a total eclipse of the sun as the moon blocked out its light.

The spacecraft was not planning to land on the moon but fly around its far side. Satellites have photographed the far side before, but the astronauts were the first human eyes to see some parts of the far side’s surface and its vast craters and lava plains.