NASA’s Artemis II mission by the numbers: Total miles travelled, proximity to the moon, splashdown time...

NASA sent the first crewed mission to the Moon this month after abandoning the endeavor for five decades. Their voyage proved that the Orion spacecraft in which they traveled is up to the task of returning mankind to the Moon once again.

While the four astronauts aboard Artemis II didn’t set foot on the lunar surface, that won’t happen until 2028 at the earliest, they still made history with their voyage around our nearest celestial neighbor. Among the many firsts of the mission, the spacefarers flew further from Earth than any human ever has before.

NASA’s Artemis II mission by the numbers

The Artemis II crew made history on Monday, April 6, 2026, at 12:56 p.m. CDT when they surpassed the record set by Apollo 13 mission in 1970 for traveling the furthest from Earth of any manned space flight. They reached a distance of roughly 252,756 miles before looping back toward Earth to return home, approximately 4,101 miles farther than Apollo 13.

In their flyby of the Moon, they passed within about 4,067 miles of the lunar surface. The Artemis II crew made good use of their voyage to take high-definition pictures of the lunar surface that will aid in future trips to the Moon in which NASA plans to land astronauts on the surface once again. But more importantly, they were able to observe the surface with their own eyes, enabling a “nuanced appreciation for the features” that robotic observers cannot obtain.

In total, the U.S. space agency estimates that the Artemis II crew will have traveled 695,081 miles from launch on April 1 to splashdown ten days later. The Orion space capsule and the four-member crew aboard will enter Earth’s atmosphere southeast of Hawaii around 8:07 pm EDT (5:07 pm PDT) and splashdown just off the coast of San Diego on Friday April 10.

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