NASA said on Sunday (April 5) that the Artemis II crewed mission will reach record distances from Earth, surpassing a mark set during Apollo 13 more than five decades ago.

Speaking at a news conference in Houston, NASA officials said the Orion spacecraft is expected to pass the Apollo 13 distance record of 248,655 miles from Earth on Monday (April 6), before traveling even farther into deep space.

NASA said Orion will reach its farthest point from Earth at around 7:07 p.m. Eastern time (0007 GMT on April 7), at a distance of 252,760 miles, more than 4,000 miles beyond the Apollo 13 record. As the spacecraft conducts its lunar flyby, the crew will observe the Moon under specific lighting conditions that will allow them to view both the near side and about 21% of the far side at closest approach, officials said.

During the flyby, astronauts will follow a detailed imaging plan tied to the mission’s lunar science objectives, photographing and describing targets selected by NASA scientists. Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed mission around the Moon since the Apollo era and is designed to test spacecraft systems and crew operations ahead of future missions that aim to return humans to the lunar surface.

DESCRIPCIÓN DE IMÁGENES

Artemis II set to fly past Moon’s far side

VIDEO SHOWS: NASA HOLDING AN ARTEMIS II MISSION STATUS BRIEFING / SOUNDBITES FROM NASA OFFICIALS

RESENDING WITH COMPLETE SCRIPT

SHOWS: HOUSTON, TEXAS, UNITED STATES (APRIL 5, 2026) (NASA - For editorial use only)

1. NASA BRIEFING FOR PROGRESS ON ARTEMIS II MISSION

2. (SOUNDBITE) (English) NASA'S ARTEMIS PROGRAM LEAD, LORI GLAZE AND ARTEMIS II LUNAR SCIENCE LEAD, KELSEY YOUNG, SAYING:

(SOUNDBITE CONTINUES OVER VARIOUS SHOTS OF PRESS BRIEFING, GLAZE AND YOUNG)

GLAZE: “A little before 2 p.m. Eastern (1800 GMT) tomorrow, we're going to pass the Apollo 13 distance record by humans, and that record is 248,655 statute miles. And that's when we break the record. And then tomorrow evening, around 7:07 p.m. Eastern (0007 GMT), we will reach the farthest distance from Earth at a distance of 252,760 miles, that's 4,105 miles farther than Apollo 13. You asked about the percent of illumination, my recollection is it's like close to like 21%."

YOUNG: “Yeah. The caveat there, though, is that that is the percent of the far side that is illuminated at closest approach. So when they are closest to the moon, they will see 21% of the far side. On their approach as you saw in that visual, they will see the full disc. It will include a big section of the near side as well as that section of the far side.”

GLAZE: “Essentially, you know, half of the moon is always illuminated. And so they will see the full 180 degrees that's illuminated as far as far side. Yeah. Thanks, Kelsey.

YOUNG: “Yeah, I think it's at closest approach. It's 4,072 statute miles.”

3. YOUNG SPEAKING

4. (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARTEMIS II LUNAR SCIENCE LEAD, KELSEY YOUNG, SAYING:

(SOUNDBITE OVERLAID OVER GRAPHIC)

“And so what you see here is what the crew will be looking at for the entirety of the flyby tomorrow. You see on the left side a list of sort of targets that (are) listed vertically in the top left of the screen. Those are the targets in the timeline to order. We're asking them to image them in. And they're in a specific order because ultimately these targets trace back to our lunar science objectives. We have 10 lunar science objectives for this mission. All of them are covered in the targets in tomorrow's targeting plan. And they're in that order down the left side that you can see. The bottom left has the words that explain the significance of the target as well as the prompts of what we're asking the crew to image and describe.”

5. BRIEFING IN PROGRESS

6. (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARTEMIS II ENTRY FLIGHT DIRECTOR, RICK HENFLING, AND NASA'S ARTEMIS PROGRAM LEAD, LORI GLAZE, SAYING:

(SOUNDBITE BEGINS OVER SHOT OF NEWS BRIEFING)

HENFLING: “All right, I’ll take a swing at the orbital mechanics here. So the translunar injection burn essentially raised our apogee, the height of our orbit above Earth, to a point where we targeted such that the moon well, as it orbits Earth, we kind of intercept the moon and we allow the moon's gravity to take over. And then because it's not, because we're not entering into lunar orbit, we coast past apogee relative to Earth and we start falling back to Earth and eventually the Earth's gravity is going to take over and bring the spacecraft back into the atmosphere.”

GLAZE: "I was just going to add one more thing to that is that as you enter as we talked about, you know, the stronger influence of the moon's gravity, you know, we're out at some distance. And so when it starts to pull on us, we go into a circular, you know, kind of like arc around the moon. And that kind of slingshot, as you can imagine a slingshot around, but then that kind of starts to overshoot and come back. And then by the time, you might, you know, go somewhere else, we're now pulled into Earth's gravity again, right? So it starts to pull us back. So it's the interplay of those two gravity fields that really drive this beautiful dance of the spacecraft.”

7. BRIEFING IN PROGRESS

8. (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARTEMIS II ENTRY FLIGHT DIRECTOR, RICK HENFLING, SAYING:

“There are no liens against use of the toilet. The crew members are able to use the toilet, but we are still trying to figure out the wastewater event line problem. It's kind of a complex engineering issue when you expose a liquid to vacuum, it's a pretty chaotic environment and there's a lot of theory and textbook work done when you assume it's pure water being exposed to a vacuum. But when you introduce the variable of it being wastewater, there's other complex phenomena that we don't quite yet understand that are that are factoring into their vent line. And so we're still working through that.”

9. BRIEFING IN PROGRESS / SCHEDULE