Artemis II Crew Heads Home After Historic Lunar Flyby

The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission is heading back to Earth after completing a historic lunar flyby and setting a new record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from the planet. The Orion spacecraft reached about 252,756 miles from Earth, surpassing the previous record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970.

The four-member crew, made up of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, conducted the flyby on a free-return trajectory that used the Moon’s gravity to swing the spacecraft back toward Earth. During the mission, the astronauts also observed the far side of the Moon and witnessed a total solar eclipse from space.

Communication with Earth was temporarily lost for about 40 minutes while Orion passed behind the Moon, a blackout that had been expected as part of the mission profile. Contact was later restored as the spacecraft continued its return journey.

Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed mission to the Moon’s vicinity in more than 50 years and is seen as a major step toward future lunar missions under the Artemis programme. The mission is designed to test Orion’s systems in deep space ahead of later flights that aim to return astronauts to the lunar surface.

The crew is expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the 10-day mission, concluding a landmark journey that has renewed global attention on human exploration beyond Earth orbit.

Source: BBC / NASA / AP