Artemis II Makes History As The Farthest Humans Have Travelled From Earth

Photo Credit: Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty via People

On Apr. 1, NASA’s Artemis II mission launched, setting off a ten-day mission around the far side of the moon, which had previously never been observed by the human eye. Artemis II set off with the objective of running tests and collecting samples for future flights. On board the Artemis II Orion spacecraft, nicknamed “Integrity,” Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and astronauts Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen travelled 406,771 kilometres away from Earth, breaking the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. 

The rocket launched on Apr. 1 at 3:24 PDT from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, and splashed down on Apr. 10 in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego.

The journey achieved many milestones in the realm of space travel. It was the furthest humans had ever travelled into space, the first time humans had travelled to the moon since 1972, and the first time a Canadian had left Earth’s orbit.

However, the trip saw a few mishaps, including temporarily losing communication during takeoff, and some toilet malfunctions once the rocket was in orbit.

The first malfunction with the toilet occurred an hour after the launch, when the Universal Waste Management System had been backed up, but the crew succeeded in fixing it. A few days later into the mission, on Apr. 4, they ran into another problem where the vent lines froze over and became jammed. As such, the crew was forced to use emergency manual collection bags.

The overall energy on board Integrity was light and fun, and the astronauts even completed a live question-and-answer session supplemented by questions from Canadian kids, as per CBC. 

Large-scale space missions like these are largely collaborative, with help from the European and Japanese space agencies alongside NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. Like the work on the International Space Station (ISS), the mission demonstrated international cooperation and collaboration.

This trip came in preparation for the future goal of landing on the moon in 2028, and eventually reaching Mars. Artemis III, a mission designed to test lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, may start as soon as 2027.