Four Astronauts Are Flying Around the Moon Today. Here Is What Artemis II Is Doing — and Why It Matters.
Four Astronauts Are Flying Around the Moon Today for the First Time Since 1972. Here Is What Artemis II Is Actually Doing — and Why the Mission Matters Beyond the Headlines.
On April 1, NASA launched four astronauts toward the moon aboard the Orion spacecraft — the first crewed mission beyond low-Earth orbit in 54 years. Today, April 6, the crew will fly around the moon's far side, setting a new record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth. Here is a complete account of what this mission is, what it is testing, and what it means for everything that comes after it.
By Sarah M. Elliot, Science Editor, NowCastDaily | April 6, 2026 | 11 min read
NASA's Artemis II mission launched on April 1, 2026, at 6:35 p.m. Eastern time from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch of NASA, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — lifted off aboard the Space Launch System rocket and were propelled into high Earth orbit before completing a translunar injection burn on April 2 that sent Orion onto a direct trajectory toward the moon. As of April 6, Day 6 of the mission, the spacecraft is completing its planned lunar flyby — the moment the entire mission has been building toward.
The flyby brings the crew to approximately 4,000 to 6,000 miles above the lunar surface — close enough to photograph the moon's far side in detail, and far enough to maintain the free-return trajectory that will bring them home. After swinging around the moon using lunar gravity as a slingshot, Orion will head back toward Earth and is expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on April 10, per NASA's official mission timeline published April 1.
What Artemis II Is Testing — and Why It Flies Around the Moon Without Landing
The question most people ask when they hear about Artemis II is reasonable: if the astronauts are going all the way to the moon, why aren't they landing? The answer is that Artemis II is a test flight — the most consequential and the most dangerous kind of mission NASA runs, because it is the first time a piece of hardware is operated with humans aboard.
Orion's life support systems have never sustained a human crew in deep space. The radiation environment beyond low-Earth orbit — outside the protective shield of the Van Allen belts — is significantly more intense than what astronauts experience on the International Space Station. The thermal systems, the waste management systems, the communications array, the manual piloting controls — all of these are being tested with real crew members for the first time on this mission. Landing on the moon before all of those systems have been proven with humans aboard would be premature, according to NASA mission documentation. That landing comes with Artemis III, currently planned for 2027.
On Flight Day 4, April 4, astronaut Christina Koch manually piloted the Orion spacecraft — the first time a human has manually controlled a vehicle in deep space. CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronaut Victor Glover observed alongside her, per NASA's Artemis blog update that day. The manual piloting capability matters because future missions near the lunar surface — with communication delays and complex orbital dynamics — will require crews to fly their spacecraft independently rather than relying on remote control from mission control in Houston.
The Record Being Set Today
At 1:56 p.m. Eastern on Monday, April 6, the Artemis II crew will surpass the record for the greatest distance any human has ever traveled from Earth — 248,655 miles — set by the crew of Apollo 13 in April 1970. The Artemis II trajectory, per NASA's updated analysis from the translunar injection burn, will carry the crew to approximately 252,021 miles from Earth — a distance of 3,366 miles beyond Apollo 13's record, and the farthest any human being has ever been from the planet they were born on.
That number is worth sitting with for a moment. Apollo 13 set its distance record not by design but by emergency — the crew had to swing around the moon on a free-return trajectory after an oxygen tank explosion crippled the service module, abandoning the planned lunar landing to survive. Artemis II sets its record by design, as part of a deliberate campaign to push human exploration farther into the solar system than any previous generation has gone.
The lunar far side — the hemisphere of the moon permanently facing away from Earth — has never been observed directly by human eyes from a spacecraft. During the flyby, with partial illumination creating shadow contrasts that reveal depth and surface texture more clearly than direct light, the crew will photograph crater rims, ancient lava flows, and geological features that have previously only been studied through robotic imagery. Those photographs will serve as scientific data for lunar geology research, per NASA's mission science documentation published before launch.
Who Is on the Crew — and Why the Composition Is Historically Significant
Commander Reid Wiseman is a US Navy test pilot and veteran NASA astronaut who previously served as ISS commander on Expedition 41. Pilot Victor Glover, also a US Navy pilot and NASA veteran, becomes the first Black astronaut to travel beyond low-Earth orbit in human spaceflight history — a milestone that NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman noted explicitly at the post-launch press conference on April 1. Mission specialist Christina Koch, who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, becomes the first woman to travel around the moon. CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen is the first Canadian to fly to the moon's vicinity.
The crew named their Orion spacecraft "Integrity" — a name Wiseman announced after launch during the first crew downlink event on April 2. The choice of name, Wiseman explained, reflects what the mission represents: the integrity of both the hardware and of the long commitment to human exploration that Artemis represents after the delays and technical challenges that preceded this launch.
What the Science Experiments Are Measuring
Beyond the spacecraft systems testing, Artemis II carries several active science investigations. The ARCHeR experiment — a wearable monitoring device — is measuring the crew's well-being, activity levels, and sleep patterns throughout the mission to build a baseline understanding of how deep-space travel affects human physiology. The data will inform the design of health monitoring systems for Artemis III and future long-duration missions to Mars.
The AVATAR experiment is carrying organ-on-a-chip devices — miniaturized systems that replicate the behavior of human organs at the cellular level — to measure the combined effects of radiation and microgravity on human tissue beyond the protection of Earth's magnetic field. Results from AVATAR will contribute directly to developing the countermeasures that will protect Mars-bound astronauts during journeys lasting months rather than days, per the experiment's description in NASA's pre-mission science documentation.
Blood and saliva samples collected from the crew during the mission will be analyzed after splashdown to measure changes to immune system function in deep space — a known concern for long-duration spaceflight that has been measured extensively in low-Earth orbit but never at lunar distances with the added radiation environment.
Victor Glover's Words From Space
The crew participated in a public affairs downlink on April 2 in which pilot Victor Glover addressed the question of what the Earth looks like from deep space — a perspective no Black astronaut had previously experienced. "Trust us, you look amazing. You look beautiful," Glover told ABC during the event, speaking of Earth. "From up here, you look like one thing. Homo sapiens is all of us — no matter where you're from or what you look like. We're all one people."
Mission specialist Christina Koch, reflecting on the experience the night before the flyby, told ABC: "I knew that that is what we would see. But there's nothing that prepares you for the breathtaking aspect of seeing your home planet both lit up bright as day and also the moon glow on it at night." Both quotes were reported by Al Jazeera's coverage of the mission on April 3, 2026.
📊 NowCastDaily Analysis
Our analysis suggests Artemis II deserves more sustained public attention than it is currently receiving, in part because a war and an energy crisis are consuming the bandwidth that would otherwise cover one of the most consequential human achievements of the decade. The mission is not symbolic. The life support data from Orion's deep-space environment — radiation exposure profiles, crew physiological responses, systems failure modes — are the technical foundation on which Artemis III's lunar landing and, eventually, a Mars mission will be built. Every successful hour of Artemis II makes the probability of those next missions higher. The photographs the crew takes of the lunar far side today are the first direct human observations of that terrain from space since Apollo 17 in 1972. Some of what they document — geology, crater morphology, the behavior of light on an airless surface — will be new to science. Monday, April 6 is worth watching, regardless of what else the world is doing.
📌 Key Facts
- April 1, 6:35 p.m. ET — Artemis II launch from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39B
- 4 crew members — Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot), Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen (CSA)
- 252,021 miles — Maximum distance from Earth; new human spaceflight record, surpassing Apollo 13's 248,655
- April 6 — Lunar flyby day; crew photographs far side of the moon for the first time from a crewed spacecraft
- April 10 — Expected Pacific Ocean splashdown off San Diego coast
- "Integrity" — Name the crew gave to their Orion spacecraft
- First time since Apollo 17, 1972 — Humans traveling beyond low-Earth orbit
- Artemis III, 2027 — Next mission; planned to include lunar surface landing
⚡ NowCastDaily Bottom Line: Today, four people are flying around the far side of the moon — a place no human has ever seen directly from a spacecraft. The mission is a test, not a landing, and the test is what makes the landing possible. What happens over the next 10 days in the Orion capsule will determine how soon, and how safely, humans return to the lunar surface for the first time in half a century.
Sources: NASA — Artemis II Launch Press Release, April 1, 2026 · Al Jazeera — Artemis II Earth Photos, April 3, 2026 · CNN — Artemis II What Happens Next, April 3, 2026
Sarah M. Elliot — Science Editor, NowCastDaily
Sarah covers space exploration, climate science, and emerging technology for NowCastDaily. She has followed NASA's Artemis program since its announcement and reported on each mission milestone since Artemis I.