Three Americans and one Canadian traveling on NASA’s Orion spacecraft surpassed a milestone set by the crew of Apollo 13 in 1970.

The Artemis II mission includes a lunar observation period lasting approximately seven hours. This is the timeframe during which the crew is close enough to the Moon—about 4,070 miles at closest approach—to conduct meaningful scientific observations.

Artemis II astronauts will watch Earth sink and rise behind the moon's curved edge today and ride through a slow solar eclipse unlike anything anyone has seen from home. From the windows of the Orion spacecraft,

Our breakdown of 7 hidden science lessons in the stunning photo taken by an astronaut on the Artemis II mission.

The space rock is hurtling through our cosmic backyard at a speed of some 11,453 miles per hour, according to the space agency.

On Friday morning, NASA shared a partial view of our bright blue planet as captured by Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander. Earth, swathed in swirling clouds, is shown rising through a window on the Orion capsule in which the crew is to journey around the moon.

The findings were published March 20 in the journal AGU Advances and were based on data recorded by Juno in 2021 and 2022, after NASA granted an extension to the spacecraft’s operations upon completing a five-year science campaign at Jupiter.

As the Artemis II crewed moon mission soars deeper into space than humans have traveled in decades, back on Earth, the White House has proposed slashing NASA’s budget.

OCEAN SPRINGS, MS / ACCESS Newswire / March 4, 2026 / The Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) is pleased to announce that researchers from NASA's Earth Science Division have joined SCEMFIS as the latest members of its Industry Advisory Board (IAB).

With the moon looming ever larger, the Artemis II astronauts raced to set a new distance record Monday from Earth on a lunar fly-around promising magnificent views of the far side never seen before by eye.