Artemis II crew earns top space honor after record-setting lunar voyage

Four astronauts have safely completed humanity’s farthest journey from Earth, carrying people around the Moon for the first time in more than half a century. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, together with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, returned on April 10 after a 10-day Artemis II mission.

The flight was the first crewed test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft and the first human voyage beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. At its most distant point, Orion reached 252,756 miles from Earth, surpassing the record set during Apollo 13. The spacecraft covered 695,081 miles in total and passed within 4,067 miles of the lunar surface.

Beyond setting records, the crew tested Orion’s life-support and other spacecraft systems, practised manual piloting and collected data intended to prepare future missions. They also captured more than 7,000 images, including views of Earth rising and setting, lunar craters and ancient lava flows.

The crew is now due to be honored at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Aug. 28 with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the highest US government award for astronauts. Only 30 people have previously received the medal, including Neil Armstrong, John Glenn and James Lovell.