NASA says the four-astronaut crew of the Artemis II mission have smashed the record for the furthest distance from Earth ever travelled by a human being.
At 12:56 CDT (17:56 UTC) on Monday, 6 April 2026, Artemis II reached a distance of 400,171km (248,655 miles) from our home planet.
That's the same distance as the previous record for the furthest distance travelled from Earth by humans, which was set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
But the crew aren't done yet. At their furthest point from Earth, Artemis II will have travelled 406,771km (252,756 miles), NASA said in a statement on 6 April 2026.
That makes Artemis II the furthest humans have ever travelled from our home planet.
Artemis II has now passed around the far side of the Moon and is heading back to Earth, where splashdown is expected to occur off the coast of San Diego at 20:07 on Friday, 10 April 2026 (00:07 UTC, 11 April).
On 6 April 2026, Artemis II's Orion capsule – where the astronauts are living and working during the mission – made a close approach of about 6,545km (4,067 miles) above the lunar surface.
The mission trajectory brought the astronauts around the far side of the Moon, where they were able to observe and photograph views of the lunar surface never seen before by human eyes.
The same side of the Moon always faces Earth, so we never get to see the far side from the ground.
During the Apollo moonlanding missions, Apollo astronauts were able to get glimpses of the lunar far side, but only in close-up.
The Artemis II astronauts travelled much further from the Moon than the Apollo astronauts, and were therefore able to glimpse the entirety of the far side of the Moon in one go.
The previous record holder of furthest distance a human crew travelled from Earth was the Apollo 13 mission.
On 15 April 1970, Apollo 13 reached a distance of 400,171km (248,655 miles) from Earth, because they had to forego their lunar landing and use the Moon's trajectory to swing themselves back home, as part of the now-famous rescue mission.
NASA’s Artemis II Orion spacecraft launched on 1 April 2026 on board a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Their mission goal was to travel around the Moon and back, as part of NASA's Artemis programme, which will ultimately seek to eventually land humans on the Moon.
After reaching their record-breaking distance, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who is part of the Artemis II crew, said: "From the cabin of Integrity here, as we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honouring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration.
"We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear. But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived."
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