Artemis II is carrying four astronauts on the first crewed lunar voyage in more than 50 years, and their spacecraft Orion has already travelled over 152,000 miles from Earth, placing them closer to the moon than to their home planet. From the docking hatch, the crew can now see the moon, describing it as “a beautiful sight,” while early downlinked images show Earth as a curved slice and then as a full glowing globe with swirling clouds and a visible green aurora.
Inside the capsule, everyday life continues with carefully planned, unrefrigerated meals such as tortillas, vegetable quiche, mango salad and barbecued beef brisket, designed to be safe, shelf-stable and easy to prepare in space. The crew are flying a “free return” trajectory, swinging about 4,000 miles beyond the moon before using its gravity to slingshot back towards Earth, a path that should allow them to break the distance record set by Apollo 13 by travelling more than 250,000 miles from home.
The mission includes several historic firsts: the first person of colour, the first woman and the first non‑American astronaut to travel on a lunar mission, as well as the inaugural crewed flight of Nasa’s SLS lunar rocket. Years of delays and cost overruns preceded liftoff, and even after launch the crew faced a practical problem when the capsule’s $30m toilet malfunctioned, forcing Christina Koch to improvise “space plumber” repairs with help from mission control before the system warmed up and worked normally.
Safety remains central, with their suits acting as “survival systems” capable of maintaining oxygen, temperature and pressure for up to six days if the cabin loses pressure, and a daily 30‑minute workout on a flywheel device to counter muscle and bone loss in microgravity. Looking back at Earth, astronaut Victor Glover highlighted how the planet appears unified from orbit, telling people at home, “You look amazing… you also look like one thing… We’re all one people.”
Reference
Kassam, A., Williams, J., & agencies. (2026, April 3). Artemis II astronauts now closer to the moon than the Earth. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/apr/03/artemis-ii-astronauts-rocket-towards-the-moon-after-breaking-free-of-earths-orbit