Updated

Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 23

Orion Returns 4 Artemis II Astronauts at 25,000 mph After 695,081-Mile Moon Mission

Updated

Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 23

Orion Returns 4 Artemis II Astronauts at 25,000 mph After 695,081-Mile Moon Mission

Q: How did a planned 2026 lunar flyby shatter a 56-year-old deep space record born from an infamous Apollo emergency?

Artemis II broke the 56-year-old record by design, flying a crew on a free-return path around the Moon that carried Orion farther from Earth than Apollo 13 reached during its 1970 emergency. The old mark belonged to Apollo 13, whose astronauts were forced to abandon a lunar landing after an oxygen-tank explosion crippled the spacecraft. Using the Moon’s gravity to swing home, Apollo 13 looped around the far side and reached about 248,655 miles from Earth. That accidental high-water mark stood because no human mission went beyond low Earth orbit after Apollo. Artemis II, launched on April 1, 2026, was planned as a lunar flyby to test Orion and its life-support and deep-space systems ahead of later landing missions. Its trajectory did not require lunar orbit or landing. Instead, Orion passed behind the Moon on a free-return route, where the geometry of the flyby and the Moon’s position in its elliptical orbit briefly pushed the crew farther from Earth than Apollo 13 had gone. NASA said the four-person crew — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — surpassed Apollo 13’s distance on April 6 and later reached a maximum distance of 252,756 miles from Earth, about 4,100 miles beyond the 1970 record. That is why the achievement mattered: Apollo 13 set the record in crisis, while Artemis II broke it on a planned mission meant to prove that NASA can safely send astronauts back into deep space and prepare for future Moon landings.

3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 23

Nearly 25,000 mph was Orion’s speed at atmospheric entry on April 10, when the capsule brought Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen back from the Moon.
At 400,000 feet, reentry shifted from propulsion to braking: the heat shield endured about 3,000°F, the crew saw up to 3.9 g, and a plasma blackout lasted roughly six minutes.
Parachutes then cut speed in stages—drogues deployed at 23,400 feet, mains at 5,400 feet—before Orion splashed down in the Pacific at about 20 mph.
The nearly 10-day Artemis II mission covered 695,081 miles and reached 252,756 miles from Earth on a free-return trajectory, surpassing Apollo 13’s distance record by 4,101 miles.
NASA framed the return as the final link in a chain that began with January’s 12-hour rollout to Pad 39B and included a rollback for repairs before the April 1 launch.