Artemis II astronauts break distance record

The four Artemis II astronauts broke Apollo 13's distance record yesterday, hugging each other as they made history by travelling farther from Earth than any other humans before them.

- Edward Helmore

The quartet dimmed the lights in their Orion capsule and positioned themselves by the windows in preparation to set the distance record during their nonstop flyby of the moon - with plans to ultimately swing around for their return to Earth.

"It is blowing my mind what you can see with the naked eye from the moon right now,” the Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said in a radio transmission before the flyby. “It is just unbelievable.”

He challenged “this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived”.

The astronauts - Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of the US space agency Nasa, and Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency - will travel 5,000 miles (8,000km) beyond the moon, far exceeding the distance record set by the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission in 1970.

They were under instruction to make observations of the moon as well as annotations, audio recordings and situation reports on “how the crew is positioned, any missed targets, anything unexpected they saw, lunar target descriptions, and their emotions and reactions” during the flyby.

The three astronauts on Apollo 13’s emergency flyby in 1970 - commander Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert - reached 248,655 miles from Earth before making their turn.