Miami, US (EFE).- United States NASA’s Orion spacecraft surpassed on Monday the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970, becoming the farthest crewed space mission, traveling 400,171 kilometers (252,752 miles) away from the Earth.
«A new milestone for humankind: The crew of Artemis II are now the farthest any human has ever travelled, reaching a maximum distance of 252,752 miles from Earth,» NASA wrote from its X account.
At 12:57 pm Eastern Time, the Orion capsule from the Artemis II mission reached a milestone while traveling on a flyby mission around the Moon. The four Orion astronauts on board were Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover from NASA, and Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.
«From the cabin of Integrity here, as we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration,» said Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a member of the mission.
The US mission launched on Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and aims to orbit the Moon and return to Earth in 10 days. The spacecraft is scheduled to fly by the Moon at 2:45 pm Eastern time and will conclude the flyby at 9:20 pm.
«We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear, but we most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived,» Hansen added.
The Apollo 13 record dates back to 1970, when the mission, popularized by the phrase «Houston, we’ve had a problem here,» suffered a technical failure that forced it to circle the Moon and use its gravity to propel itself back to Earth.
A key moment of Artemis II’s lunar orbit will be when the astronauts pass over the far side of the Moon, allowing them to photograph and observe this part of the satellite firsthand.
The last time a human observed this region of the Moon (hidden from Earth due to the Moon’s synchronous rotation) was in 1972, when the Apollo 17 crew became the last to step on the lunar surface.
The Orion’s flyby, equipped with 32 cameras, will enable a more detailed study of the far side of the Moon. However, the astronauts will lose communication with Earth for about 40 minutes while the Moon is between the planet and the spacecraft.
The Artemis II mission will exit lunar influence on Tuesday at 1:25 pm Eastern Time as part of its return to Earth. EFE
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