Farther away than anyone has gone before.
The Orion spacecraft is now in the lunar sphere of influence, meaning the moon’s gravity has more pull on the vehicle than the Earth. At 1:57 p.m. ET, the crew surpassed the record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth by humans, which was set by the Apollo 13 mission at 248,655 statute miles from Earth. At 2:45 p.m., the crew will begin making observations of the surface of the moon during the flyby.
Pretty good. Fly on!
So cool.
Oh, yes. It is all over the news.
Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/science/artemis-crew-reaches-moon-approaches-record-breaking-distance-earth-2026-04-06/
1.656% further, after 56 years. Whoo!
H. sapiens can do that! I guess I was born to the right species. 8-)
@ ^ John Morales :
Yet we are finally retruning to dointhe most impressiveand remarkable thing our species have ever done and going further. Even if by just a bit. Which is awesome and superluminous (beyond merely brilliant) in my view. Am loving seeing this misison and rocket & spacecraft fly and it is giving some hope and showing what Humanity can do at our best.
Live coverage on Aussie ABC here : .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-07/artemis-ii-on-track-break-all-time-distance-record/106534158
Plus watching Ellie inspace live follow along of this here
This is a fantastic commentary:
https://bsky.app/profile/the-astro-stud.bsky.social/post/3miugrmtwwc2b
Clarity fix :
Yet we are finally returning to doing the most impressive and remarkable thing our species have ever done
.***
Er, actually make that please come back and splash down safely here on Earth! ;-)
But hopefully many more missions will fly onwards and land on our Moon and Mars and travel to asteroids and far more.
In some circumstances, advancing by 1.7% is a monumental achievement.
Well, computing power is up a tad more these days. As are telecommunications. As is automation.
As are almost all the sciences such as materials technology or medicine or sensors.
Space toilets aside, obs.
(And by a few to many orders of magnitude, not under 2%; e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer )
—
But sure, almost waking up from many decades of stagnation and loss of competence is monumental, for some.
In some circumstances. ;)
Doing in the 1960s was more impressive.
I am all for sending out probes and putting freaking good telescopes (etc.) in orbit and elsewhere. But the more we learn about how the human body responds to microgravity, the radiation damage, and the intrinsic costs of keeping canned apes alive, the more I think that for the rest of my life – and for several decades afterwards – we should keep crewed launches to visiting the ISS and its successors. Landing on the Moon (particularly with 1960s/1870s technologies) was pretty cool, and eventually humans visiting Mars will be pretty cool….but we should wait to try to go to Mars until we know a lot more about space medicine and have better propulsion and life support technologies. Also, that our robots will have constructed a large and comfortable base for the arriving humans to work out of. Maybe late next century.
(1977’s Voyager 2 is currently 143 AU from the Sun and still in communication with Earth, still doing science. We now return you to your regular programming.)
This time we did it with a budget.
Nixon wanted to rival Kennedy’s ‘moonshot’ with an effort to fight cancer, but the basic science wasn’t there yet. Here is some recent news:
.
Detecting multiple cancers and other diseases from a single blood sample
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-04-multiple-cancers-diseases-blood-sample.html
Budget indeed, pilgham: https://www.space.com/astronomy/deja-vu-trump-proposes-cutting-nasa-science-funding-by-47-percent-again
Meanwhile, https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/19/congress-braces-for-200b-iran-war-request-00835914
Oh, great, another stupid American measuring unit to obfuscate things. How many metres is a statute mile?
@ ^ bluerizlagirl :
1 Statute mile = 1 609.344 Meter [m]
Source : https://www.convert-measurement-units.com/conversion-calculator.php
@10. larpar : “Doing in the 1960s was more impressive.”
I wasn’t around then. Doing it now is still pretty impressive too – & hopefully we’ll keep going this time and end up going much further.. If Trump doesn’t get us all into WW III soon..
@ 11. Dibwys :
Disagree. I think we do need to work on those areas but we shouldn’t just wait and delay and not try to constantly progress and advance and just wait instead. I think we need to keep going and keep and gain momentum here.
I don’t think procrastinating and saying its too hard so we won’t try doing it now is the right approach at all.
I said nothing about “wait and delay” or not trying to “constantly progress and advance”. Waiting is a matter of being cautious and not wasting lives for the sake of attempting ego satiation. “Scream and leap” is not an effective strategy. I want careful planning, careful and thorough research, and thoughtful consideration of the next action. Doing something ‘because it is exciting’ is a route to tragedy and set-backs. I want humanity to ‘win at space’, not engage is periodic spewing of inadequately equipped victims into space. Note: It does not have to happen in your lifetime in order to be a success for humanity.
Mere distance teaches us nothing. If that is all that Moonshot boosters can come up with, then the whole thing is a waste. OTOH a real moon base and lunar exploration would be good. Wake me when that happens.