Artemis II slingshots around the Moon

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The Artemis II mission has reached the Moon, carrying out a lunar flyby that took the astronauts further from the Earth than any human has ever travelled. The crew reached their maximum distance of nearly 252,000 miles into space, breaking the record set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970 by roughly 5,000 miles. At 18.47 Eastern Time, the Moon blocked out the radio signals that Nasa uses to communicate with the astronauts, who lost contact with the Earth for about 40 minutes. During the flyby, the team observed previously unseen parts of the far side of the Moon. These include the Orientale basin, a 900km crater formed roughly 3.8bn years ago during an intense flurry of asteroids. The mission also examined the Hertzsprung basin, an older impact site. Images of the two locations will be compared to shed light on how the lunar landscape has changed over time.