On April 1st, the Artemis II mission set out for the moon. They aimed to achieve something no crew had before: they wanted to circle the moon.
The crew of 4 (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen) are the first to leave Earth’s orbit since the Apollo 17 in 1972.
The 10-day mission brought astronauts in a loop around the moon, then back again. At their closest, they were just 4,000 miles from the moon. At their furthest, the crew was over 250,000 miles from Earth, unintentionally breaking the record since 1970, when the Apollo 13 traveled roughly 248,000 miles away.
This is also a mission of ‘firsts’ for the crew – Glover became the first person of color, Koch the first woman, Hansen (as part of the Canadian Space Agency) the first non-U.S. citizen, and Wiseman the oldest person to travel beyond low Earth orbit.
This mission was the first part of NASA’s Artemis program. The mission aimed to gauge spacecraft performance, the crew’s ability to adapt and operate in a deep space setting, and test systems to prepare for future steps in the program.
The crew landed back on Earth around 8pm on April 10th. All members seem to be in good health following the difficult adjustment back to their home planet.
