October 20, 2026 · 3 min read
Artemis II launched April 1, 2026, sending 4 astronauts 252,756 miles from Earth — the farthest humans have ever traveled. Full timeline inside.
On April 1, 2026, four astronauts did something no human had done in 54 years: they left Earth orbit headed for the Moon. When NASA's Artemis II mission splashed down nine days later, its crew had traveled 252,756 miles from home — farther than any humans in history, beating a record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
Artemis II carried NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), and Christina Koch (mission specialist), plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Glover became the first Black person to travel to the Moon's vicinity, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-American to leave Earth orbit.
They rode inside the Orion capsule Integrity, launched atop NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 p.m. EDT.
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| April 1, 2026 | Liftoff from Kennedy Space Center, 6:35 p.m. EDT |
| April 2, 2026 | Translunar injection burn sends Orion toward the Moon |
| April 3–5, 2026 | Cruise phase: crew tests life support, runs experiments, beams video home |
| April 6, 2026 | Lunar flyby — crew passes 252,756 miles from Earth, breaking Apollo 13's record |
| April 7, 2026 | Crew calls the International Space Station; begins the trip home |
| April 8–9, 2026 | Return cruise and final systems checks |
| April 10, 2026 | Splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego |
The headline record: 252,756 miles from Earth, the greatest distance any humans have ever traveled. The previous record belonged to the Apollo 13 crew, who reached 248,655 miles in 1970 during their famous aborted mission.
The mission also marked the first crewed flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft and the first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 in December 1972 — a gap of more than 53 years.
Artemis II wasn't a sightseeing trip. The crew ran a packed flight-test program: operating Orion's life-support systems with four people aboard for the first time, testing radiation sensors in deep space beyond Earth's magnetic shield, practicing manual piloting of the capsule, and conducting navigation experiments using the Moon and stars as reference points. They also beamed live video back to Earth — including an "Earthset" photograph taken by Christina Koch that instantly became one of the most shared space images of the decade.
One critical test: Orion's reentry at lunar-return speed, roughly 25,000 mph, subjecting the largest heat shield ever built for a crewed spacecraft to temperatures near 5,000°F. It held. That single data point retired one of the biggest risks in the entire Artemis program.
Artemis II was a proving flight. Orion's life-support systems, radiation shielding, and high-speed reentry heat shield were all tested with a crew aboard for the first time. NASA has since restructured the program: Artemis III is now planned as a 2027 crewed demonstration in Earth orbit, testing rendezvous and docking with the commercial landing systems built by SpaceX and Blue Origin, with a lunar landing targeted for Artemis IV in 2028.
For nine days in April 2026, four people were the farthest-flung humans who ever lived — and they came home to tell us about it.
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