Artemis II breaks distance record, sending humans further from Earth than ever before

NASA's Artemis II crew made history Monday, surpassing the 56-year-old distance record set by Apollo 13 to become the farthest humans ever to travel from Earth as their Orion spacecraft completed a sweeping lunar flyby around the far side of the moon.

by Daily Planet

April 6, 2026

2 mins read

NASA’s Artemis II crew made history Monday, surpassing the 56-year-old distance record set by Apollo 13 to become the farthest humans ever to travel from Earth as their Orion spacecraft completed a sweeping lunar flyby around the far side of the moon.

The Artemis II crew surpassed the previous record of 248,655 miles set by Apollo 13 in April 1970, reaching a maximum distance of 252,760 miles from Earth — a margin of roughly 4,105 miles beyond the previous mark.

The four crew members, Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1. Today’s lunar flyby is the culmination of a 10-day mission that marks the first time humans have left Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

With Glover, Koch and Hansen aboard, the mission also represents the first time a Black astronaut, a woman and a non-American have ventured this deep into space.

NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft’s main cabin windows on Saturday, April 4, 2026, looking back at Earth, as the crew travel toward the Moon. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

During the flyby, the crew passed within approximately 4,070 miles of the lunar surface, capturing close-up imagery of terrain that no human eye has ever seen. A communications blackout of roughly 40 minutes occurred while Orion passed behind the far side of the moon, cutting contact with Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston — a standard and anticipated consequence of the spacecraft’s trajectory.

The lunar flyby also gave the crew a rare sight: a total solar eclipse as the moon blocked out the sun, exposing the shimmering corona in deep space. Once Artemis II departs the lunar neighborhood, the crew will spend four days returning home, with a splashdown targeted for the Pacific Ocean near San Diego on April 10.

Pilot Victor Glover reflected on the significance of the journey during Holy Week. Flying to the moon brought home for him “the beauty of creation,” he said, describing Earth as an oasis amid “a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe.” “This is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing and that we’ve got to get through this together,” Glover said, clasping hands with his crewmates.

A view of the nearside of the Moon, the side we always see from Earth. Some of the far side is visible, as well, on the left edge, just beyond the black patch that is Orientale basin, a nearly 600-mile-wide crater that straddles the Moon’s near and far sides and is partly visible from Earth. The dark areas in the center and right side of the disk are ancient lava flows, which are unique to the near side of the Moon. The white dot at the bottom of the disk, with white rays shooting out from it, is Tycho crater, one of the younger craters on the Moon at 108 million years old. (Photo taken April 4, 2026, courtesy of NASA)

The Daily Planet’s exclusive two-part interview series with former NASA flight director John Curry — who spent four decades in spaceflight and is among the most authoritative voices in the history of human space exploration — will publish in full before the crew’s splashdown on April 10. Curry’s perspective on what this mission means for the future of the Artemis program is not to be missed.

Flight director Judd Frieling offered a clear-eyed summary of what comes next: “We’ll get eyes on the moon, kind of map it out and then continue to go back in force.”

Artemis III, currently scheduled for 2027, will send a crew into low Earth orbit to test integrated operations between Orion and commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin. Artemis IV, planned for early 2028, is slated to be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17.

The Daily Planet’s Daniel Sanchez spoke with former NASA flight director John Curry, who shared with us the most important thing he learned from the Russians after the Cold War, what it will take to co-exist on the moon, and if we can all go to space in our lifetime.