Artemis II moon mission breaks Apollo 13 record for distance from Earth

NASA’s Artemis II astronauts reached a record distance from Earth, marking a major milestone as they prepare to fly around the Moon’s far side.

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HOUSTON: The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission cruised on Monday (Apr 6) to the deepest point in space reached by any human, following the tug of lunar gravitational force en route to a rare crewed flyby over the perpetually shadowed far side of the moon.

As the climactic six-hour flyby of Earth's only natural satellite got underway, some two dozen lunar scientists packed a room adjacent to mission control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to record the astronauts' first observations of the moon's surface in real time.

The Artemis II crew, riding in their Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, began their sixth day of spaceflight as they awoke at around 10.50am ET to a recorded message from the late NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, who flew aboard the Cold War-era Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 moon missions.

"Welcome to my old neighbourhood," said Lovell, who died last year at age 97. "It's a historic day, and I know how busy you'll be, but don't forget to enjoy the view ... good luck and Godspeed."

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The four Artemis astronauts set a new spaceflight record on Monday as they exceeded the maximum 400,000km distance from Earth reached in 1970 by Apollo 13 after a nearly catastrophic spacecraft malfunction cut short that mission, forcing Lovell and his two crewmates to use the moon's gravity to help return them safely to Earth.

Later on Monday, the Artemis crew of US astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen were due to reach their own farthest distance from Earth - 406,769km, around 6,626km beyond the record held by the Apollo 13 crew for 56 years.

NAMING CRATERS

Along the way, crew members spent some time assigning provisional new names to lunar features that previously lacked official designations.

In a radio message to mission control in Houston, Hansen suggested one crater be dubbed Integrity, after the name given to the crew's Orion capsule, and that another crater sometimes visible from Earth on the cusp between the far and near sides of the moon be named in honor of Wiseman's late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

"A number of years ago, we started this journey, our close-knit astronaut family, and we lost a loved one," Hansen said of the mission commander's late spouse, his voice choking with emotion as he described the position of her lunar namesake. "It's a bright spot on the Moon, and we would like to call that Carroll."

As Orion sailed around the moon's far side, the crew was expected to witness its surface from as close as roughly 6,500km above its darkened surface as it eclipsed what would appear to be a basketball-sized Earth in the distant background.

Because the moon rotates at the same speed as it revolves around the Earth, its far side always faces away from our planet, so that few human beings - only members of the Apollo crews who orbited the moon during their missions - have ever gazed directly on its surface.

The milestone would mark a climactic point in the nearly 10-day Artemis II mission, the first crewed test flight of NASA's Artemis programme, successor to NASA's 1960s-70s Apollo project, and the world's first voyage to send humans in the vicinity of the moon in more than half a century.

RARE DETAILED PHOTOS

The planned multibillion-dollar series of Artemis missions aims to return astronauts to the moon's surface by 2028, ahead of China, and establish a long-term US presence there over the next decade, building a moon base that would serve as a proving ground for potential future missions to Mars.

The last time astronauts walked on the moon - a feat so far achieved only by the United States - was the final Apollo mission in 1972.

Monday's lunar flyby will plunge the crew into darkness and brief communications blackouts as the moon blocks them from NASA's Deep Space Network, a global array of massive radio communications antennas the agency has been using to talk to the crew.

During the six-hour flyby, the astronauts will use professional cameras to take detailed photos of the moon through Orion's window, showing a rare and scientifically valuable vantage point of sunlight filtering around its edges.

The crew will also have the chance to photograph a rare moment in which their home planet, dwarfed by their record-breaking distance in space, will set and rise with the lunar horizon as they swing around, presenting a celestial remix of the moonrise typically seen from Earth.

HUMANS CAN SEE WHAT CAMERAS MISS: ASTROPHYSICIST 

Speaking to CNA’s Asia First, Brad Tucker, astrophysicist and cosmologist at the Australian National University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, said the presence of astronauts offers advantages that go beyond what cameras and satellites can capture.

He noted that the human eye can detect subtle differences in colour and shading that imaging systems may miss, as well as observe real-time events such as small meteors striking the Moon’s surface.

Addressing why such missions are still necessary decades after Apollo, he said Artemis II is “testing the entire system” – from a new rocket and capsule to its first crewed flight. 

While minor issues have emerged, including a brief toilet malfunction, Tucker noted that the mission has largely proceeded as planned, serving as a critical test for future Artemis missions, such as upcoming lunar landings and longer-term plans for Mars.

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