Lightbox.

The article focuses on NASA's Artemis II mission, which launched on April 1, 2026, marking the first crewed lunar journey since the Apollo program. The crew—commander Reid Wiseman and astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—traveled 4,700 miles beyond the lunar far side, setting a record for the farthest distance humans have been from Earth at 252,756 miles. The mission featured the powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, surpassing the Apollo-era Saturn V in thrust, and included a rare hour-long solar eclipse observed from lunar orbit. Artemis II safely concluded with a splashdown off San Diego, demonstrating the spacecraft’s heat shield resilience during re-entry. This mission is part of a broader Artemis program aiming to return humans to the moon, with Artemis III and IV planned for 2027 and 2028, respectively. [Extracted from the article]