On Monday, Artemis II embarked on its monumental journey, conducting a historic flyby of the moon. This mission milestone provides its crew and observers back on Earth unprecedented views of the moon’s elusive far side.
The spacecraft commenced its lunar flyby at approximately 2:45 p.m. ET. For over six hours, the capsule will gracefully navigate around the moon, with its windows offering stunning views of the hidden lunar landscape.
Stay tuned for The Post’s real-time updates on NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon.
During this mission, the four crew members will make history by being the first humans to observe vast regions of the moon’s far side, areas that remained obscured during the Apollo missions over five decades ago.
The Apollo missions flew in closer proximity to the moon, which restricted their visual range. However, Artemis II’s trajectory is distinctively different, maintaining a distance of 4,000 to 6,000 miles from the lunar surface. This vantage point allows the crew to witness the entire far side basked in full sunlight.
But Artemis II’s flyby is different — the capsule will stay between 4,000 and 6,000 miles from the lunar surface, which will allow the crew to see the entirety of the far side under the full light of the sun.
The moon will appear about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length to the crew looking out the Orion capsule’s windows.
It was also about three to four times larger than Earth as the flyby began, the crew reported.
Artemis II’s astronauts will spend the flyby photographing and making in-person observations of the far side as part of their research.
They will also lose contact with Earth about halfway through the flyby around 6:44 p.m. ET, when the moon itself blocks communications signals between the capsule and Earth.
Communications should be re-established around 7:25 p.m., minutes after Artemis makes its closest pass to the lunar surface at about 4,000 miles in altitude.
The crew has already set the record for the furthest distance traveled from Earth around 2 p.m. ET, when they flew further than Apollo 13’s 248,655-mile record which had stood unbroken since 1970.
Artemis II will continue breaking that record, reaching about 252,757 miles from Earth by the time they’re through.
The flyby will end around 9:20 p.m., and the crew will be on their way home to Earth from then on.
But they won’t need to fire their thrusters to get back, as the capsule will have used the moon’s gravity to slingshot it back to Earth.
It will be a four-day journey home, with the capsule expected to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean around 8:07 p.m. ET on Friday.
And if all goes well, astronauts will go back up for an Earth-orbiting mission in 2027 under Artemis III and then walk on the moon in 2028 for Artemis IV.
