The Artemis II crew set a record on Monday for the farthest distance traveled by humans from Earth, flying over the far side of the Moon and reaching 252,757 miles (406,773 kilometers) in distance.
The surpassed mark belonged to the mission Apollo 13, which on April 15, 1970 reached 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from Earth. This record was recognized by Guinness World Records and stood for over 56 years. However, it has just been surpassed.
Artemis II surpassed the mark for the first time at 1:46 p.m. Eastern Time, with a final lead of about 4,102 miles (approximately 6,600 km) over the historical record set by Apollo 13.
The maximum distance was reached at 7:07 PM UTC, shortly after the point of closest approach to the lunar surface, when the spacecraft passed just 4,066 miles (6,543 km) from the Moon.
The Orion spacecraft —named "Integrity" by its crew— followed an eight-shaped trajectory around the Moon, the same free return path that NASA used in 1970 to rescue the astronauts of Apollo 13 after an oxygen tank explosion on board that spacecraft.
Hours before the flyby, at 12:37 a.m. on the same Monday, the Orion spacecraft entered the gravitational influence of the Moon, the first time this had happened since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
The official transmission from NASA confirmed the milestone: "The gravitational forces of the Moon are now stronger on the Orion spacecraft than those of the Earth."
The astronaut Christina Koch described that moment with enthusiasm: "Now we are descending towards the Moon instead of moving away from Earth. It's an incredible milestone." Koch also noted that the distance record "is a milestone that people can understand and relate to."
During the flyby, the spacecraft lost communication with Earth for approximately forty minutes, between 6:44 p.m. and 7:25 p.m. Eastern Time, a planned phenomenon while passing over the far side of the Moon. The entire flyby lasted about six hours.
The previous day, the crew had captured the first complete image of the Orientale basin, a geological formation 930 kilometers in diameter located at the edge between the visible and the dark side of the Moon, formed 3.8 billion years ago and never before seen in its entirety by human eyes.
The crew is composed of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen. Glover is the first person of African descent to participate in a crewed lunar mission, Koch is the first woman to fly to the Moon on a crewed mission, and Hansen is the first Canadian citizen to do so.
Artemis II was launched last Tuesday from platform 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aboard the SLS rocket.
The mission does not include a lunar landing. Its objective is to validate the Orion spacecraft's systems with a human crew, paving the way for Artemis III, which aims to take humans to the lunar south pole in 2027.
The return and splashdown are scheduled in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on April 10.
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