Rocketing through space and past the previous record distance a human has traveled in space, the Artemis II rocket flew around the Moon and was approximately 252,757 miles from Earth at the farthest point of its route. This record distance for human space travel was previously held at 248,655 miles by the 1970 Apollo 13 mission.
The Artemis II mission, which occurred between April 1 and April 10, took four astronauts around the dark side of the Moon, the side that has never been observed by human eyes before and which is never visible from Earth. These astronauts were as close as 4,067 miles away from the Moon.
Artemis II launched April 1 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After going around the Earth twice and exiting Earth’s orbit, the travel time to the moon was about four days and followed a figure-8 like pattern that looped around the Moon and returned to Earth. The spacecraft lost contact with NASA for around 40 minutes, which was expected, during a certain point when the Moon was between the spacecraft and Earth.
On April 10, the space capsule containing the astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near California’s San Diego coast. Three huge parachutes helped slow capsule down as it approached the ocean; so much so, it was going only 17 miles per hour when it hit the water. The four astronauts had a safe return and were retrieved from the ocean by NASA and flown to a ship of the U.S. navy.
This astronaut crew was made up of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. While on this mission, the astronauts proposed names for two of the Moon’s craters. One would be named Integrity, which is the name they gave their space capsule, and the other would be named Carroll, after Wiseman’s deceased wife.
The 2022 Artemis I mission was successful but uncrewed. The Artemis II mission now boasts a successful, humanly crewed mission to the Moon. As for the goal of the Artemis missions, NASA says that they plan “to send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.”
To commemorate the two major milestones of the Artemis II mission and our country’s 250th anniversary this year, the two solid rocket boosters used to launch the Artemis II rocket were painted with an “America 250” emblem. With Artemis III planned for 2027 and Artemis IV and V projected for 2028, keep your eyes and ears on NASA’s space exploration and the planned lunar landing of the Artemis IV mission.
