The four Artemis II mission astronauts, first lunar travellers since Apollo 17 in 1972, are speeding across space to complete their historic lunar fly-around to push deeper into space than any astronauts before them.
Their spacecraft, Orion, will travel about 6,400km beyond the moon before turning back, providing unprecedented and illuminated views of the lunar far side.
The three Americans and one Canadian will reach their destination Monday, photographing the mysterious lunar far side as they zoom around.
Artemis II was poised to set a distance record for humans, travelling more than 400,000 kilometres from Earth before heading home. The record is currently held by Apollo 13.
Nasa released the crew’s first downlinked images on Friday, one and a half days into the first astronaut moonshot in more than half a century.
The first photo taken by Commander Reid Wiseman showed a curved slice of Earth in one of the capsule’s windows. The second showed the entire globe with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds. A green aurora even glows, according to Nasa.
Wiseman, Canadian Jeremy Hansen Victor Glover and Christina Koch are the world’s first lunar astronauts since Apollo 17’s crew of three in 1972. Koch and Glover are the first female and first Black astronauts to the moon, respectively.
Their nearly 10-day mission — ending with a Pacific splashdown on April 10 — is the first step in NASA’s bold plans for a sustainable moon base. The space agency is aiming for a moon landing by two astronauts near the lunar south pole in 2028.
Sources: Associated Press, The Guardian, BBC,
[Image: Nasa/Reid Wiseman]