Four astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft became the farthest-travelling humans in history on Monday, 6 April 2026, reaching 252,756 miles from Earth during Artemis II’s lunar flyby and surpassing a record set by the stricken Apollo 13 mission in April 1970.
The milestone was achieved at 19:02 US Eastern Time as the crew completed their closest approach to the Moon at 4,067 miles altitude before emerging from behind the lunar surface and re-establishing contact with Mission Control.
The mission carries historic firsts across its crew: NASA astronaut Victor Glover became the first person of colour to travel around the Moon, Christina Koch became the first woman, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen became the first non-American.
Commander Reid Wiseman, the oldest of the four, led the crew through seven hours of close lunar observation.
Records broken on the far side
The previous human distance record of 248,655 miles was held by the Apollo 13 crew, who reached that point in April 1970 not by design but as a consequence of an oxygen tank explosion that forced an emergency loop trajectory around the Moon.
The Artemis II crew exceeded that mark by more than 4,000 miles as part of a fully planned scientific mission.
During the observation phase, the crew captured an estimated 10,000 photographs and became the first humans to see portions of the Moon’s far side with the naked eye.
They also observed at least four meteoric impact flashes on the lunar surface during a solar eclipse lasting approximately one hour, when Orion, the Moon, and the Sun aligned and the crew studied the solar corona with the lunar disc blocking direct sunlight.
“The four of us have looked at this our entire lives,” Commander Wiseman said during a communications pass with Mission Control.
“We cannot get enough of this.”
Pilot Victor Glover, describing what he saw through Orion’s windows, added: “It just looks unreal. You can see the surface of the moon against the Earthrise.”
Mission timeline and the road to Artemis III
Splashdown is scheduled for Friday evening, approximately 20:00 US Eastern Time, off the coast of San Diego. If the mission concludes without incident, NASA will have demonstrated that Orion and its life support systems can sustain a crew through the demands of a deep-space lunar trajectory, the critical verification needed before proceeding to a crewed lunar landing.
Artemis III, the next planned mission in the programme, aims to place astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in December 1972. Artemis II’s data on crew performance, spacecraft systems, and communication reliability will inform final preparations for that mission.
The Artemis programme is operating under the Artemis Accords, an international framework for responsible lunar exploration that has drawn participation from multiple African Union member states.
