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  "path": "/2026/04/06/artemis-ii-crew-in-tears-travel-earth-human-ever-27877452/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-06T18:16:11.000Z",
  "site": "https://metro.co.uk",
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    "News",
    "World",
    "Nasa",
    "Tech reviews",
    "The Moon",
    "supports HTML5\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tvideo",
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  "textContent": "To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tvideo\n\nUp Next\n\nPrevious Page\n\nNext Page\n\nThe Artemis II astronauts are now the farthest humans from Earth that there have ever been.\n\nThe record-breaking crew chose the poignant moment to propose naming two craters on the dark side of the moon after their ship Integrity and commander Reid Weisman’s wife Carroll, who sadly passed away before the mission.\n\nJeremy Hanson said in a tearful communication as they floated 248,655 miles from Earth: ‘We lost a loved one.’\n\nPointing out the never-before-seen crater, he said: ‘There is a feature on the near side boundary of the moon and so in certain times we will be able to see it from Earth.\n\nThe Orion capsule will now whip around the Moon, setting the crew up to travel farther from our home planet than any human before.(Picture: AFP)\n\n‘We lost a loved one, her name was Carroll she was a mother of Katie and Ellie. It’s a bright spot on the moon. We would like to call it Carroll.’\n\nNASA astronaut Reid Wiseman choked up as he dedicated a crater to his dead wife (Picture via REUTERS)\n\n‘Integrity and Carroll crater. Loud and clear’, comes the message back from NASA.\n\nThe six-hour flyby is the highlight of NASA’s first return to the moon since the Apollo era.\n\nLess than an hour before kicking off the fly-around and intense lunar observations, the four astronauts surpassed the distance record of 248,655 miles (400,171 km) set by Apollo 13 in April 1970.\n\nThey kept going, hurtling ever farther from Earth. Before it was all over, Mission Control expected Artemis II to beat the old record by more than 4,100 miles (6,600 km).\n\nThe astronauts woke up to the voice of Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, who recorded the message just two months before his death last August. ‘Welcome to my old neighborhood,’ said Lovell, who also flew on Apollo 8, humanity’s first lunar visit. ‘It’s a historic day and I know how busy you’ll be, but don’t forget to enjoy the view.’\n\nNASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft’s main cabin windows, looking back at Earth (Picture via REUTERS)\n\nThey took up with them the Apollo 8 silk patch that accompanied Lovell to the moon, and showed it off as the crucial flyby approached. ‘It’s just a real honor to have that on board with us,’ said commander Wiseman. ‘Let’s go have a great day.’\n\nArtemis II is using the same manoeuvre that Apollo 13 did after its ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’ oxygen tank explosion wiped out any hope of a moon landing.\n\nKnown as a free-return lunar trajectory, this no-stopping-to-land route takes advantage of Earth and the moon’s gravity, reducing the need for fuel. It’s a celestial figure-eight that will put the astronauts on course for home, once they emerge from behind the moon Monday evening.\n\nNASA Artemis II mission specialist and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen enjoys a shave inside the Orion spacecraft during Flight Day 5 (Picture: via REUTERS)\n\nWiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen were on track to pass as close as 4,070 miles (6,550 kilometers) to the moon, as their Orion capsule whips past it, hangs a U-turn and then heads back toward Earth. It will take them four days to get back, with a splashdown in the Pacific concluding their test flight on Friday.\n\nTheir expected speed at closest approach to the moon: 3,139 mph (5,052 kph).\n\nWiseman and his crew spent years studying lunar geography to prepare for the big event, adding solar eclipses to their repertoire during the past few weeks.\n\nTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tvideo\n\nUp Next\n\nPrevious Page\n\nNext Page\n\nBy launching last Wednesday, they ensured themselves of a total solar eclipse from their vantage point behind the moon, courtesy of the cosmos.\n\nTopping their science target list: Orientale Basin, a sprawling impact basin with three concentric rings, the outermost of which stretches nearly 600 miles across.\n\nOther sightseeing goals: the Apollo 12 and 14 landing sites from 1969 and 1971, respectively, as well as fringes of the south polar region, the preferred locale for future touchdowns. Farther afield, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn — not to mention Earth — will be visible.\n\nArtemis II is NASA’s first astronaut moonshot since Apollo 17 in 1972. It sets the stage for next year’s Artemis III, which will see another Orion crew practice docking with lunar landers in orbit around Earth. The culminating moon landing by two astronauts near the moon’s south pole will follow on Artemis IV in 2028.\n\nWhile Artemis II may be taking Apollo 13’s path, it’s most reminiscent of Apollo 8 and humanity’s first lunar visitors who orbited the moon on Christmas Eve 1968 and read from the Book of Genesis.\n\nGlover said flying to the moon during Christianity’s Holy Week brought home for him ‘the beauty of creation.’ Earth is an oasis amid ‘a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe’ where humanity exists as one, he observed over the weekend.\n\n‘This is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing and that we’ve got to get through this together,’ Glover said, clasping hands with his crewmates.\n\nComment now Comments \nAdd Metro as a Preferred Source on Google\nAdd as preferred source\n",
  "title": "Artemis II crew ‘in tears’ as they travel further from Earth than any human has ever been"
}