Artemis II surpasses the midpoint, now closer to the Moon than Earth

Saturday 04 April 2026 - 07:50

By: Dakir Madiha

Artemis II surpasses the midpoint, now closer to the Moon than Earth

NASA released the first photographs taken by the Artemis II crew on Friday, offering striking views of Earth as four astronauts travel toward the Moon on the first crewed lunar mission in more than five decades. The images, captured by mission commander Reid Wiseman through a window of the Orion spacecraft, show Earth's blue oceans wrapped in swirling white clouds, with green auroras shimmering at the poles. One photograph, titled "Hello, World," frames the Atlantic Ocean bordered by a thin atmospheric halo as Earth casts a shadow across the Sun. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said the crew was "glued to the window" watching their home planet shrink in the distance.

Artemis II lifted off on April 1 at 6:35 p.m. Eastern time from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard NASA's Space Launch System rocket. On Thursday evening, the crew fired Orion's main engine for nearly six minutes in a maneuver called translunar injection, accelerating the spacecraft to approximately 24,500 mph and sending it out of Earth's orbit on a trajectory toward the Moon.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am thrilled to announce that, for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, humanity has left Earth's orbit," NASA's Lori Glaze said at a press conference following the maneuver.

By Saturday morning, mission controllers informed the crew that they had crossed a significant threshold: they were now closer to the Moon than to Earth, according to Space.com. The four astronauts, Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Hansen, are three days into a planned 10-day flight.

On Monday, April 6, the crew will fly past the far side of the Moon, passing within 6,400 kilometers of the lunar surface. During the flyby, they will capture high-resolution photographs and conduct observations of terrain never directly seen by human eyes. Lighting conditions are expected to cast long shadows that will reveal ridges, slopes, and crater rims in unusual detail.

The mission trajectory will carry the crew more than 6,400 kilometers beyond the Moon, farther from Earth than any human has ever traveled, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. The Moon's gravity will then slingshot the Orion capsule back toward Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, scheduled for April 10.