By T.J. Muscaro
Contributing Writer
HOUSTON — The human race is now flying farther from its home planet than at any other time in history.
At approximately 1:57 p.m. on Monday, NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, flew their Orion spacecraft Integrity beyond 248,655 statute miles — a record set by Apollo 13 almost exactly 56 years ago.
The pioneering moment came at the beginning of Day 6 of Artemis II’s 10-day test flight, and mere minutes before its four astronauts were scheduled to begin the first flyby around the moon since 1972.
Mission Control announced the milestone to the crew, adding that they were taking all of humanity with them as they crossed the threshold.
“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,” Hansen said.
“We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear,” he added.
“But we, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long lived.”
Hansen went on to submit his crew’s shared request to name two unnamed features they have already observed on the lunar surface.
The first is a crater they were able to already observe on the far side, about halfway between two of the mission’s primary targets: Orientale Basin and a crater called Ohm. They asked that the crater be named Integrity after their spacecraft.
The second is a bright spot on the nearside. They asked that it be called Carroll in memory of Wiseman’s late wife, who died in 2020 from cancer.
“There’s a feature in a really neat place on the moon and it is on the near-side/far-side boundary,” Hansen said. “In fact, it’s just on the nearside of that boundary, so at certain times of the moon’s transit around the earth, we will be able to see this from Earth.”
The crew came together in a group hug and tears were shed for the loss of someone all four of them saw as a loved one and member of the close-knit astronaut family.
For the next several hours, the crew was to continue to move closer to the Moon and farther from Earth. Mission leaders expected Integrity’s uphill trajectory to peak at 252,760 statute miles away and reach its closest point to the moon — a little more than 4,000 statute miles above its surface — just after 7 p.m. ET on Monday.
In the farthest distance of deep space reached by a crewed spaceflight, astronauts will gaze upon areas of the moon that have never been seen before by unaided human eyes. They will spend hours taking pictures and making geological observations of various targets selected by lunar scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and by the crew themselves. They will also witness an Earthset, an Earthrise, and a full solar eclipse.
Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen crossed into the moon’s gravitational pull at approximately 12:37 a.m. on Monday. Flight director Rick Henfling and Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said that this was the point at which they could see Artemis II arrive at the moon.
The moment was acknowledged by the crew as they prepared to go to bed, and Koch noted that the moon was now appearing bigger in the windows than the Earth.
Upon waking, they heard a statement from the late Jim Lovell, the NASA astronaut who took part in both Apollo 8, the first-ever crewed flight to the moon, and helped set the now-broken distance record commanding Apollo 13.
“Welcome to my old neighborhood,” he said. “When Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and I were around the moon on Apollo 8, we got humanity’s first up-close look at the moon, and got a view of our home planet that inspired a united people around the world.”
“I’m proud to pass the torch onto you as you swing around the moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars for the benefit of all.”
He wished the crew, and all of the ground teams involved, good luck from “the Good Earth,” the way Apollo 8 referred to it during their broadcast in lunar orbit. He also reminded the crew to enjoy the view even though they would be incredibly busy.
Lovell died on Aug. 7, 2025, at the age of 97.
