The Artemis II mission’s spacecraft, Orion, broke the record for human travel at about 13:56 EDT (18:56 BST) on Monday, beating a record of 248,655 miles (400,000km) held since 1970 by the Apollo 13 mission.
Canadian astronaut Jeremey Hansen acknowledged the achievement with humility.
“As we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from planet Earth, we do so in honoring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration,” he said.
As the spacecraft approached and the Moon swelled in its windows, the astronauts began working through a checklist of things to record on its surface, taking images with an array of digital cameras and, as Nasa had briefed, making sketches and recording their own audio descriptions of what they saw.
The spacecraft was not planning to land on the Moon but fly around its far side, the side which is never visible from Earth. Satellites have photographed the far side before, but the astronauts were the first human eyes to see some parts of the far side’s surface and its vast craters and lava plains.
After the flyby President Trump spoke with the Orion team and congratulated them: “Today, you’ve made history and made all America really proud, incredibly proud.”
He went on to ask the four astronauts what the most unforgettable part of their day had been.
Commander Reid Wiseman told the President: “We saw sights that no human has ever seen, not even Apollo, and that was amazing for us.”
