The four-person crew of NASA's Artemis II mission have become the farthest-travelling humans in history, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. The milestone was reached on Saturday, 6 April, as the Orion spacecraft travelled behind the Moon, more than 248,655 miles from Earth.
The mission, which launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 1 April, is NASA's first crewed lunar flyby in over half a century. The 10-day journey, carrying commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, is a critical systems test for future crewed Moon landings.
Technical Hiccups Overcome En Route
The historic journey was not without its challenges. Shortly after launch, mission specialist Christina Koch reported a fault with the Orion capsule's modernised toilet system, the Universal Waste Management System. "The toilet fan is reported to be jammed," said NASA spokesperson Gary Jordan during mission commentary.
Ground teams in Houston provided remote instructions, and the crew successfully repaired the system by 2 April. A separate issue involving frozen urine clogging a pipe was resolved by rotating the capsule to warm the plumbing.
In a more terrestrial problem, approximately seven hours into the mission, Commander Reid Wiseman reported that Microsoft Outlook on his personal computing device—a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet—had stopped working. "I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working," Wiseman said in a livestreamed exchange with Mission Control, who remotely accessed and fixed the system.
A Record and a Tribute
The record-breaking moment at 1:57 p.m. ET on 6 April was marked by a prerecorded message from the late Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell, played by Mission Control. "Hello, Artemis II, this is Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell. Welcome to my old neighbourhood," the message said, passing "that torch on to you as you swing around the moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars."
From aboard Orion, Canadian mission specialist Jeremy Hansen responded, honouring "the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors." Hansen then led an emotional tribute, naming a newly identified lunar crater near the Glushko crater the "Carroll Crater" in honour of Commander Wiseman's late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020. The crew also named a crater "Integrity," after their spacecraft.
Documenting the Journey
NASA confirmed to Business Insider that an iPhone 17 Pro Max is aboard the mission, used by the crew to capture photographs. Several images, including self-portraits of Koch and Wiseman silhouetted against Earth, have been published on NASA's Flickr portal. Metadata indicates they were taken with the phone's front-facing camera, a 2.715mm lens at f/1.9 aperture. The crew also has a Nikon D5 camera at their disposal.
The Artemis II mission is scheduled to return to Earth on 10 April, concluding a journey that has tested new technologies and re-established human presence in deep space, paving the way for the planned Artemis III lunar landing.