If all goes according to plan, the Artemis II astronauts will spend the following three days journeying to the moon.
Their next major milestone will come Monday, when they are scheduled to fly around the moon. When they do, they could venture farther from Earth than any humans have before, surpassing the distance record of 248,655 miles set by the Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.
Over the course of the flyby, the Artemis II astronauts will come within 4,000 to 6,000 miles of the moon’s surface, according to NASA. From that vantage point, the moon should appear about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length.
As the astronauts swing around the moon, they will become the first to see parts of the lunar surface with human eyes. That is because the far side of the moon always faces away from Earth.
After the flyby, the astronauts will spend the final few days of the mission traveling back to Earth. They are scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on April 10.
Artemis II is a key part of NASA’s efforts to return astronauts to the moon and establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface. The agency eventually hopes to build a base on the moon.
Next year, NASA aims to launch the Artemis III mission, which will conduct technology demonstrations in low-Earth orbit with the commercially built moon landers. SpaceX and Blue Origin are developing landers to carry NASA astronauts from lunar orbit down to the moon’s surface, so the mission could test one or both.
Then, NASA aims to launch the Artemis IV mission sometime in 2028 to land on the moon.
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