Artemis crew reaches the moon, approaches record-breaking distance from Earth

The four astronauts of Nasa's Artemis ​II mission entered ⁠the moon's gravitational sphere of influence early on Monday as they cruised along ‌a path that will soon take ‌them over the shadowed, lunar far side to become the farthest-flying humans in history.

The Artemis II crew, flying in their Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, awoke around 10:50am ET for their sixth flight day to ‌a recorded message from late Apollo 8 and 13 astronaut Jim Lovell.

"Welcome to my old neighbourhood," said Lovell, who ⁠died last year at 97. "It's a historic day, and I know how busy you'll be, but don't forget to enjoy the view... good luck and godspeed."

Astronaut Jeremy Hansen shaving inside the Orion spacecraft during Flight Day 5. AFP

Nasa astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are due to reach their maximum distance from Earth by 7:07pm (2307 GMT) of roughly 252,760 miles, some 4,105 miles (6,606km) beyond the record held by Lovell and his Apollo 13 crew for 56 years.

As they ​approach the distance record, they will be sailing around the moon's far side, witnessing it from ‌roughly 4,000 miles above its darkened surface as it eclipses what will appear to be a basketball-sized Earth in the distant background.

The milestone is a climactic point in the nearly 10-day Artemis II mission, the first crewed test flight ⁠of Nasa's Artemis program.

This screengrab taken from a Nasa livestream shows the Orion Spacecraft and The Moon on Monday. AFP

The multibillion-dollar series of missions aims to return astronauts to the moon's surface by 2028 before China, and establish a long-term U.S. presence there over the next decade, building a moon base that would serve as a proving ground ​for potential future ‌missions to Mars.

Officially starting at 2:34pm ET (1834 GMT), the lunar flyby will plunge the crew into ‌darkness and brief communications blackouts as the moon blocks them from Nasa's Deep Space Network, a global array of massive radio communications antennas the agency has been using to talk to the crew.

Astronauts to spend six hours surveying the moon

The flyby will last about six hours, during which the astronauts ‌will use professional cameras ‌to take detailed photos of the moon through Orion's ⁠window, showing a rare and scientifically valuable vantage point of sunlight filtering around its edges.

Nasa staff pose for a group photo in the White Flight Control Room at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, on Monday. AFP

The crew ‌will also have the chance to photograph a rare moment in which their home planet, dwarfed by their record-breaking distance in space, will set and rise with the lunar horizon as they ⁠swing around, a celestial remix of a moonrise seen from Earth.

A team of dozens of lunar scientists ​positioned in the Science Evaluation Room at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will be taking notes as the astronauts, who studied an array of lunar phenomena as part of mission training, describe their ⁠view in real time.

Reuters