NASA announced Monday that the Artemis II crew has crossed into the moon’s sphere of influence — the point where lunar gravity dominates over Earth’s. At the moment Orion entered that region, the spacecraft was about 63,000 kilometers (39,000 miles) from the moon and roughly 232,000 miles from Earth.
In the coming hours the crew is expected to make its closest approach, passing roughly 7,500 kilometers beyond the lunar far side. Artemis II follows a figure-eight trajectory around Earth and the moon; at its nearest point the crew will be able to see both Earth and the moon at once and may witness a solar eclipse as the Sun disappears behind the lunar disk from Orion’s perspective.
NASA says the vehicle entered the lunar sphere of influence at 04:42 GMT Monday. The mission will record the first crewed lunar flyby since 1972, and the astronauts will travel farther from Earth than any humans in history.
The four-person crew — U.S. astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Reid Wiseman, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — are the first people to return to the moon’s vicinity in more than 50 years. Victor Glover will be the first person of color to circumnavigate the moon, and Christina Koch will be the first woman to do so.
A primary task for the crew is documenting the lunar surface during the flyby. They have already begun to observe surface features never before seen directly by the human eye. NASA released an image taken by the Artemis II crew showing the distant moon with the Orientale basin visible, calling it the first time the entire basin has been viewed by human eyes.