Artemis crew reaches the moon, approaches record-breaking distance from Earth

NASA's Artemis II crew reaches the moon, approaching a historic distance record from Earth in their Orion capsule.

The ​four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission entered the moon’s gravitational sphere ⁠of influence early on Monday (April 6, 2026) morning as they cruised along a path that will soon take them over the shadowed, lunar far side to become the farthest-flying humans in history.

The Artemis II ‌crew, flying in their Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, awoke around 10:50 a.m. ET for their sixth flight day to a ‌recorded message from late Apollo 8 and 13 astronaut Jim Lovell.

“Welcome to my ‌old ⁠neighborhood,” said Lovell, who died last year at 97. “It’s a historic day, ⁠and I know how busy you’ll be, but don’t forget to enjoy the view... good luck and godspeed.” NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are due to reach ​their maximum distance from Earth by ‌7:07 p.m. (2307 GMT) of roughly 252,760 miles, some 4,105 miles (6,606 km) beyond the record held by Lovell and his Apollo 13 crew for 56 years.

As they approach the distance record, they will be sailing around the moon’s far side, witnessing it ‌from roughly 4,000 miles above its darkened surface as it eclipses what will ​appear to be a basketball-sized Earth in the distant background. The milestone is a climactic point in the nearly 10-day Artemis II mission, the ⁠first crewed test flight of NASA’s Artemis programme.

The multibillion-dollar series of missions aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface by 2028 before China, and establish a long-term U.S. presence there ‌over the next decade, building a moon base that would serve as a proving ground for potential future missions to Mars.

Officially starting at 2:34 p.m. ET (1834 GMT), the lunar flyby will plunge the crew into darkness and brief communications blackouts as the moon blocks them from NASA’s Deep Space Network, a global array of massive radio communications antennas the agency has been using to talk to the crew.