Record-Setting Flight Beyond Earth
The four crew members, Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Anthony Gibbons, and Jeremy Hansen of Canada, began their 6th day aboard the Orion capsule after launching from Florida about a week ago, with a greeting message from former Apollo Astronaut Jim Lovell, who passed away at the age of 97 just a couple of months prior.

He called the distance from Earth to his "old neighbourhood", and encouraged them to enjoy the historic moment as they would be flying about 252,710 miles away from Earth later that same day. This distance is 4,110 miles greater than the previous record set by Jim Lovell and his Apollo 13 crew at 248,600 miles and has been the longest-held record by any living person for 56 years.

The astronauts will travel about 4,000 miles over the Moon's far side (from the Moon's perspective) while it's shadowing them with about 1/2 several minutes of no communications (during which they will have a photograph taken of the light reflecting on the edges of the Moon as it rotates) and simultaneously 6 hours of no signals or voice. They will see that the Earth will appear in the distance and rise and set on the Moon's horizon.

Goal and Future Plans
This is a major achievement during the first approximately 10-day Artemis II mission official test for the NASA Artemis program—the goal to return humans to the Moon by 2028 and establish a long-term human presence on the lunar surface.

The lunar base is expected to assist future long-range, robotic, and manned deep-space missions, including Mars. Currently, teams of NASA scientists at the Johnson Space Centre (Houston) are continuing to evaluate the Artemis II mission and will continue documenting what astronauts see and learn and their real-time data as they fly, going around the Moon.