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NASA's Artemis II mission is about to make history. After a successful April 1 launch, and a trip of 39,000 miles through space, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen are about to travel farther from Earth than any human beings have before, and you can watch the entire thing unfold online. NASA will stream the entire flyby on YouTube and its own NASA website, with coverage beginning at 1PM ET. You can also watch NASA through Netflix.
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Artemis II and its four-person crew have entered the Moon's "sphere of influence," meaning the spacecraft is more affected by lunar gravity than the Earth's pull. The transition occurred at a distance of 39,000 miles from the Moon, four days, six hours and two minutes into the mission. The next and most important phase will happen tomorrow when the craft loops around the Moon's far side, taking humans deeper into space than they've ever been before.
At their apogee, Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Canada's Jeremy Hansen will be 252,757 miles from Earth. That will break the previous record held by the Apollo 13 crew by just over 4,000 miles. They're the first humans to cross the lunar threshold since 1972's Apollo 17 moon landing mission.
The crew spent this weekend carrying out preparations for their lunar flyby. That included manual piloting demonstrations, reviewing their science objectives for the six-hour observation period and evaluating their space suits, which are there for life support in the event of an emergency and for their return home. But, they've had plenty of time to take in the views, too — and those views sure are spectacular. In the latest series of images shared by the space agency, the astronauts are seen gazing at Earth through the windows of the Orion spacecraft.
Orion will reach the moon's vicinity shortly after midnight on Monday, April 6. Later that day, the crew is expected to reach a point farther than any humans have traveled from Earth, surpassing the record of
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 The Artemis II crew is almost at the moon, and the astronauts spent this weekend carrying out preparations for their lunar flyby on Monday. That included manual piloting demonstrations, reviewing their science objectives for the six-hour observation period and evaluating their space suits, which are there for life support in the event of an emergency and for their return home. But, they've had plenty of time to take in the views, too — and those views sure are spectacular. In the latest series of images shared by the space agency, the astronauts are seen gazing at Earth through the windows of the Orion spacecraft.
Orion will reach the moon's vicinity shortly after midnight on Monday, April 6. Later that day, the crew is expected to reach a point farther than any humans have traveled from Earth, surpassing the record of 248,655 miles from Earth set by the Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.
Mission specialist Christina Koch takes in the view.NASAThe lunar observation period will start at 2:45PM ET, and a few hours later, they'll be behind the moon and
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