It was a moment for the history books: The Artemis II mission performed its much anticipated lunar flyby yesterday, and came within just 4,067 miles of the moon.While soaring aboard their Orion capsule beyond the far side of the moon, the crew also reached an estimated 252,756 miles from Earth, breaking Apollo 13’s record for the farthest humans have traveled into space.The flyby lasted seven hours, during which the astronauts could enjoy views of the lunar surface previously unseen by human eyes, with about 21% of the moon’s mysterious far side illuminated by the sun from the crew’s perspective.AdvertisementAdvertisementWorking in two shifts across roughly five hours, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen took about 10,000 photos, according to NASA’s livestream of the mission.Communications stopped for about 40 minutes during Orion’s transit behind the moon. The crewmembers saw “Earthset,” or Earth appear to set behind the moon, not dissimilar to what the Apollo astronauts witnessed in 1968.Craters are visible across the lunar surface. On the illuminated side of Earth, clouds are visible over Australia and Oceania, while the dark side is in nighttime.Earth set at 6:41 p.m. ET behind the moon. – NASAThe Artemis science team trained the crew to look for specific features on the moon, including ancient lava flows and impact craters. In this Earthset image, the astronauts saw Hertzsprung Basin, which appears as two concentric rings.The ringed Orientale Basin and the two newly named craters, Integrity and Carroll, can be seen. – NASAThe astronauts also spied rings around the Orientale Basin, one of the moon’s youngest large impact craters. Prior to this mission, Orientale had never been seen with human eyes before.AdvertisementAdvertisementAt the 10 o’clock position in relation to Orientale are …
