Hello, Moon! Artemis II crew travels farther into space than any humans before

The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission travelled deeper into space on Monday than any humans before them, conducting a rare flyby of the moon's shadowed far side. This journey revealed a lunar surface marked by constant cosmic bombardment.

“Artemis II has reached its maximum distance from Earth. On the far side of the Moon, 252,756 miles away, Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy have now traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history and now begin their journey home. Before they left, they said they hoped this mission would be forgotten, but it will be remembered as the moment people started to believe that America can once again do the near-impossible and change the world,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. 
 
During the six-hour survey of the normally hidden hemisphere of Earth's only natural satellite, the astronauts observed impact flashes from meteors striking the dark and heavily cratered surface.

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About two dozen scientists monitored the lunar phenomena in real time from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston as the Orion spacecraft, roughly the size of an SUV, orbited the moon approximately 402,000 kilometres from Earth.

The flyby, which brought the crew within 6,550 kilometres of the lunar surface, occurred six days into the spaceflight. This mission marks the first time astronauts have travelled near the moon since the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Artemis, the successor to Apollo, aims to return humans to the moon by 2028 and establish a sustainable lunar presence in the following decade, including a base to support future Mars missions.

Along the way, the Artemis crew assigned provisional names to lunar features without official designations. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen proposed naming one crater Integrity, after their Orion capsule, and another near the moon's cusp Carroll, in memory of mission commander Reid Wiseman's late wife.

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As the Orion capsule passed the moon’s far side, the crew witnessed the lunar surface eclipsing a distant Earth. Because the moon rotates synchronously with its orbit, the far side always faces away from Earth, making direct observation by humans rare.

Equipped with professional cameras, the astronauts captured detailed photographs of the moon’s surface and a rare celestial sight of Earth setting and rising over the lunar horizon. The flyby included a 40-minute communications blackout as the moon blocked signals from NASA's Deep Space Network.