NASA’s Artemis II mission, piloted by a Southern California native, reached a historic milestone Monday as astronauts traveled around the far side of the moon and farther from Earth than any humans in history.
The mission surpassed the previous distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 at 248,655 miles during its lunar flyby Monday, according to NASA.
The six-hour lunar flyby was the highlight of NASA’s first mission to the moon since the Apollo era, sending three Americans and one Canadian into lunar orbit as a step toward a planned landing near the moon’s south pole within two years.
The spacecraft was on a return trajectory toward Earth, with splashdown off San Diego expected Friday.
The mission launched Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Among the astronauts aboard is Victor Glover, who was born in Pomona, attended Ontario High School and graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Serving as pilot of the Orion spacecraft, he is the first person of color to take part in a lunar mission.
Glover is joined by Commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialists Christina Hammock Koch and Jeremy Hansen.
“We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear,” Hansen told mission control Monday. “But we, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.”
The crew also suggested that an unnamed lunar crater be named in tribute to Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll Wiseman.
“It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call that Carroll,” Hansen said.
During the flyby, Artemis II astronauts photographed the lunar surface and recorded observations while briefly losing contact with mission control for about 40 minutes as the capsule passed behind the moon. As they emerged from the far side, the crew joined the small group of humans to witness an “Earthrise.”
Glover spent more than five months aboard the International Space Station in 2020-21, traveling there aboard SpaceX’s first full crew rotation flight by a U.S. commercial spacecraft. That work made him the first Black crew member to ever serve on the ISS.
He also has extensive ties to Southern California beyond his upbringing, having served as a test pilot at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in the Mojave Desert and earning a master’s degree from Air University at Edwards Air Force Base.
On Friday, NASA released high-resolution images of Earth captured by the crew after the spacecraft completed a key engine burn placing it on a trajectory toward the moon.
Astronauts said they were “glued to the windows” taking photos of Earth as it receded into the distance, with Hansen describing “a beautiful view of the dark side of the Earth, lit by the moon.”
Wiseman later contacted mission control to ask how to clean the spacecraft windows after the crew’s viewing left them smudged. Wiseman also said photographing Earth from deep space proved challenging.
“It’s like walking out back at your house, trying to take a picture of the moon,” he told mission control. “That’s what it feels like right now.”
Communications are being handled in part by NASA’s Deep Space Network, which is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
The current program schedule calls for the Artemis III launch sometime next year, testing lunar landers being developed by Hawthorne-based SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Artemis IV is expected to launch in early 2028, marking the return of astronauts to the lunar surface using a lunar lander.
Artemis V, another lunar surface mission, is expected to occur in late 2028, with additional missions planned roughly once a year after that.