Artemis astronauts break record for distance from earth

The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission have reached the furthest point that any human has been from earth, kicking off their lunar flyby and taking in magnificent views of the far side of the moon never before witnessed.

The Artemis II crew, flying in their Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, awoke 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."

The six-hour flyby is the highlight of NASA's first return to the moon since the Apollo era with three Americans and one Canadian ? a step toward landing boot prints near the moon's south pole in just two years.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen have now surpassed the distance record of 400,171 kilometres set by Apollo 13 in April 1970.

Mission Control expects Artemis II to beat the old record by more than 6600km.

"It is blowing my mind what you can see with the naked eye from the moon right now. It is just unbelievable," Hansen radioed ahead of the flyby.

He challenged this generation and the next to make sure the record is not long-lived.

Moments after breaking Apollo 13's record, the astronauts asked permission to name two fresh lunar craters already observed.

They proposed Integrity, their capsule's name, and Carroll in honour of commander Reid Wiseman's wife who died of cancer in 2020.

Wiseman wept as Hansen put in the request to Mission Control, and all four astronauts embraced in tears.

"Such a majestic view out here," Wiseman radioed once he regained his composure and started picture-taking.

The astronauts called down that they managed to capture the moon and Earth in the same shot, and provided a running commentary to scientists back in Houston on what they were seeing.

Some peaks were so bright, pilot Victor Glover noted, that they looked as though they were covered in snow.

Besides photographing the scenes with high-powered Nikon cameras, the astronauts also pulled out their phones for some impromptu shots.

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

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.

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.

Artemis II is using the same manoeuvre that Apollo 13 did after its "Houston, we've had a problem" oxygen tank explosion wiped out any hope of a moon landing.

Known as a free-return lunar trajectory, this no-stopping-to-land route takes advantage of earth's and the moon's gravity, reducing the need for fuel.

It's a celestial figure-eight that will put the astronauts on course for home, once they emerge from behind the moon.

With AP