Artemis crew set distance record from Earth

Updated 6 April 2026, 1.05 p.m. CDT (Houston time)

Artemis astronauts set record for distance travelled from Earth by humans

The Artemis II crew has just set a record for the farthest humans have ever travelled from Earth. They have surpassed the record of Apollo 13, set in 1970, of 248,655 statute miles (400,171 kilometres) from our home planet. (Apollo 13 set that record after it suffered an explosion on the way to the Moon, which forced the crew to abort their planned landing and instead slingshot around the far side of the Moon.)

Some scientists and NASA folks will tell you that the distance record doesn’t really matter. It is, after all, something of an artifice — there is nothing fundamentally different about the environment that the Artemis II astronauts will be passing through, thousands of kilometres above the Moon’s surface, to the one that Apollo astronauts did, tens to hundreds of kilometres above the surface. But it is a moment to mark in human history, in which people travel farther from planet Earth than ever before.

“We will continue our journey even farther into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear,” said astronaut Reid Wiseman as the crew set the record. “But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long lived.”

Later today, the Artemis II crew will reach their farthest distance from Earth, of 252,760 statute miles (406,778 kilometres) — before their trajectory takes them back towards our home planet. — Alexandra Witze

Updated 6 April 2026, 12.37 p.m. CDT (Houston time)

Today’s science activities will unfold according to a ‘lunar targeting plan’ drawn up by mission scientists. Essentially, the astronauts trained to be able to recognize major geological features on the surface of the Moon from many angles. Once Orion set its final course to the Moon, over the past few days, team scientists have updated predictions for what the astronauts will see. The lunar targeting plan lists the features the scientists want the astronauts to observe.

As Orion approaches the Moon, the astronauts will first see features on the lunar near side, which faces Earth and is familiar to amateur astronomers. Those include the bright Aristarchus crater, one of the most brilliant features on the Moon. As the capsule flies around the back of the Moon, the crew will get better views of features on the little-seen far side, such as the magnificent multi-ringed Orientale impact basin.

The astronauts have a checklist of science observations to make, such as comparing the appearance of two craters (named Glushko and Ohm) to assess their difference in brightness to the human eye. On the far side, they’ve been asked to compare and contrast the colours of various regions, in hopes they will add additional information to orbiter data already gathered on these regions. — Alexandra Witze

Updated 6 April 2026, 12.10 p.m. CDT (Houston time)

Although this is a NASA mission, other countries beyond the United States are also involved. The European Space Agency, for instance, contributed the ‘service module’ ( see ‘Orion spacecraft’ graphic below) that provides power and propulsion to Orion as it coasts through deep space. The Canadian Space Agency lent their astronaut Jeremy Hansen (the other three astronauts on board are from NASA). And the German Aerospace Center contributed radiation-monitoring sensors to Orion, to better track the astronauts’ exposure to energetic particles in deep space.

Four countries also contributed small satellites, or cubesats, that launched alongside Orion on 1 April. Two of those cubesats, from Argentina and Saudia Arabia, have been communicating with their operators; two others, from Germany and South Korea, have been silent. Ad astra, little cubesats. — Alexandra Witze

Updated 6 April 2026, 11.21 a.m. CDT (Houston time)

Reader question: Will the astronauts scout a site today for a future Moon landing?

No. It’s true that Artemis II is meant to be a stepping stone in NASA’s plans to land astronauts back on the lunar surface. The agency is planning for that to happen somewhere near the Moon’s south pole, where there are shadowy craters rarely touched by sunlight that might contain water ice. This ice could be a precious resource for future astronauts to use for sustenance and to break down into fuel (hydrogen and oxygen); it might also hold clues about the early Solar System for scientists.

The Artemis II astronauts will be able to view the north and south polar regions of the Moon’s far side for the first time by eye today (the Apollo astroanuts didn’t do this). But at closest approach, the Moon will appear to the Artemis II crew to be the size of a basketball held at arm’s length. That view will simply not be detailed enough to scout future landing sites.

Much more relevant will be high-resolution data from spacecraft orbiting the Moon, such as NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft. Those can help NASA narrow down a future site. — Alexandra Witze

Updated 6 April 2026, 10.40 a.m. CDT (Houston time)

Just like it sounds, Artemis II is the second mission in NASA’s Artemis programme, which has the ultimate goal of putting humans back on the lunar surface and maybe even establishing a Moon base there. If you’ve forgotten Artemis I, that’s because it flew way back in 2022 — and without any humans on board.

Artemis I was the first test flight of NASA’s enormous Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion capsule. After the SLS lifted Orion into space, the capsule looped around the Moon and then came back to Earth, over the course of nearly 26 days. That flight demonstrated that the SLS/Orion pairing was capable of flying to deep space. The current mission, Artemis II, is testing the same idea but with four humans on board, to see how well Orion can sustain them in deep space. — Alexandra Witze

Updated 6 April 2026, 9.32 a.m. CDT (Houston time)

Here’s where we are in the mission so far. Artemis II launched last Wednesday, 1 April, from Cape Canaveral in Florida. After orbiting Earth to check out their systems, the astronauts set a course for the Moon. Their capsule is already in the ‘lunar sphere of influence’, which means that the Moon’s gravity exerts more of a tug on the spacecraft than Earth’s gravity does.

Today’s a big day because the astronauts will be passing behind the Moon, at the closest distance they will ever be to our celestial neighbour. For a period of about six hours, they’ll orient their capsule’s biggest windows towards the Moon and gather in pairs at those windows, photographing and observing the Moon as they whizz past.