The Artemis-2 crew has surpassed the previous record for the greatest distance traveled from Earth. NASA announced on Monday that the four-person crew, traveling aboard the Orion capsule, has broken the record of approximately 400,000 kilometers, a mark originally set in 1970 by the Apollo-13 mission. They are expected to travel even further in the coming hours.
The astronauts participating in this mission are American citizens Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman, along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen. They launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System during the night leading into Thursday. Last night, Orion reached the point in its trajectory where the gravitational pull of the Moon exceeds that of Earth.
The flight profile for Artemis 2 follows a path resembling a figure-eight around both Earth and the Moon. In total, the crew is scheduled to travel over 2.3 million kilometers before making a landing back on Earth in the Pacific Ocean. The mission holds historical significance for its members: for Glover, Koch, and Wiseman, this marks their second spaceflight; for Hansen, it is his first. Furthermore, Koch is the first woman to be on a NASA lunar mission, Glover is noted as the first non-White person aboard, and Hansen is the first Canadian astronaut.