GoKawiilis a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid.
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All the news of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s attempt to return humans to the Moon
On April 15th, 1970, Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert set a distance record when Apollo 13 traveled 248,655 miles from Earth. Nearly 56 years later, the crew of Artemis II is expected to break that record by several thousand miles when the Orion spacecraft reaches a maximum distance of 252,757 miles away from Earth later today as it completes its flight around the far side of the Moon.
NASA’s coverage of the lunar flyby begins at 1PM ET today if you want to follow along at home, while the astronauts are expected to set the new distance record from Earth at 1:56PM ET. The trip around the far side of the Moon will take about six hours and include observations of the lunar surface never before seen by humans, as well as surveys to identify possible landing locations for future missions.
The Artemis II crew will lose communications with Earth for about 40 minutes starting at 6:44PM ET as they pass behind the Moon until 7:25PM ET when our planet will come back into view for them. The mission’s itinerary for today includes the following notable events:
1:56PM ET: The crew will set a new record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.
2:15PM ET: The crew will reconfigure the spacecraft’s cabin for “flyby operations.”
2:45PM ET: Lunar observation begin.
6:44PM ET: The predicted loss of communications begins as Orion heads behind the Moon.
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