Artemis II Live: NASA’s Orion speeds toward a historic loop around the moon
The astronauts will venture farther into space than the Apollo 13 crew, setting a record
NASA’s Orion spacecraft carrying four astronauts snapped this selfie, as part of an inspection, as it hurtled toward the moon.
NASA
HOUSTON — After five days in space and five decades of waiting, human astronauts are about to get an unprecedented view of the moon.
With Earth in the rearview mirror, the Artemis II mission’s Orion spacecraft is now in the lunar sphere of influence, where the moon’s gravitation pull is stronger than Earth’s. When Orion swings around the farside of the moon on April 6, the four astronauts aboard Orion will see lunar features that have barely been glimpsed before by human eyes, and never in such detail. The astronauts — NASA’s Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman and Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — have spent years preparing to take scientific observations during the few hours they’ll have with the moon in their sights.
The flyby will last from about 2:45 p.m. to 9:40 p.m. Eastern time, including about 45 minutes when the spacecraft will be in the moon’s shadow and out of contact with Earth. While only about 20 percent of the moon’s farside will be illuminated in sunlight at flyby time, the astronauts will still get the clearest view yet of the region. The team also anticipates seeing the Apollo 12 and 14 landing sites, an eclipse as the moon blocks the sun from Orion’s perspective and possibly flashes of light when meteorites strike the moon.
Science News’ astronomy reporter, Lisa Grossman, is on the scene at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, providing updates as the flyby progresses.
11 a.m.: An astronaut wake-up call
I and other members of the press walked into the viewing area for the Mission Control Center right as the team was posing for a group photo. Reporters held phones up to the windows to take our own photos of the photo, a sort of meta moment.
Live video from the Orion spacecraft showed the moon looming large. Many of the stations in the room will be familiar to anyone who has seen movies set at NASA like Apollo 13 or Hidden Figures. But one of them is new: For the first time, there’s a SCIENCE console in the room.
A little before 11 a.m. ET, the astronauts’ wake-up song, “Good Morning” by Mandisa and TobyMac, came over the loudspeakers. We also heard a prerecorded message from Apollo 8 pilot Jim Lovell, who died in August 2025.
“Welcome to my old neighborhood,” Lovell said. “It’s a historic day, and I know how busy you’ll be. But don’t forget to enjoy the view.”
