Nasa’s Artemis crew headed back to Earth after record-breaking trip around moon
The four Artemis II astronauts eclipsed the 400,171km distance record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970
Nasa’s four Artemis astronauts swung behind the moon and are headed back to Earth, in a journey that shattered space travel distance records and brought people the closest they have been to the lunar surface in more than 50 years.
“All of your flight controllers and your flight director have flipped their Artemis II patches around. We are Earth-bound and ready to bring you home,” Jenni Gibbons, a Canadian space agency astronaut and backup crew member for Artemis II, told the astronauts as they emerged from an expected communications blackout around the moon.
At their nearest distance to the moon, the Artemis II’s Lockheed Martin Corp-built Orion capsule came within an estimated 6,545km (4,067 miles) of the lunar surface, according to calculations by Nasa. From the crew’s point of view, the moon would have appeared roughly the size of a basketball in someone’s outstretched hand.
The spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth minutes later, reaching 406,771km (252,756 miles), Nasa Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a post on X.
The astronauts earlier broke the distance record for space travel. Shortly before 2pm New York time on Monday (2am Tuesday Hong Kong time), they surpassed the distance the Apollo 13 crew travelled in 1970 of 400,171km from Earth, Nasa said.