The Artemis II mission is at another landmark. The four astronauts on board Orion spacecraft successfully crossed halfway between the Earth and Moon earlier.
Two days after liftoff, the astronauts hit the halfway mark more than 140,000 miles from Earth on their four-day orbit around the Moon.
The mission launched on April 1, and was the first time humans had left Earth’s orbit in over 50 years bringing deep space travel back after the Apollo age.
During their travel into deep space the astronauts were able to take and send back incredible high-resolution photos of Earth- a vivid blue ball covered in cloud with bright auroras surrounding it.
Others pictures show Earth curved and hanging in blackness as the atmosphere on its edges gives a thin glow of separation to the planet from the vast emptiness of space.
The astronauts seemed overcome. Christina Koch revealed how the team were filled with ‘joy‘ at the halfway point while other astronauts spoke about being able to see both Earth and the Moon hanging there at once.
The Orion is travelling on a free-return path. This means that the spaceship will not attempt a landing but will instead loop around the Moon and use its gravitational pull to return it to Earth.
During the course of the flight the astronauts – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen – will pass by the Moon later in the week and travel 4,000 miles beyond the lunar surface before returning.
The goal of the mission according to NASA is to test life support, navigation and deep space technologies for future Moon landings under the Artemis program. The flight is due to be completed after around 10 days with a splash down in the Pacific and engineers collecting data during the voyage.
