NASA's Artemis II crew continued their outbound trek to the Moon on April 3, with the Orion spacecraft more than 72,000 miles from Earth as the 10‑day mission entered its second day. Flight telemetry posted by NASA showed the four astronauts cruising at roughly 4,880 mph and with about 180,000 miles left to travel before their planned lunar flyby on the sixth day of the mission.
Artemis II, which lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39B on April 1 aboard the Space Launch System rocket, is the first crewed lunar mission in more than half a century and the first step beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The mission will carry Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, mission specialists Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a roughly 230,000‑mile loop around the far side of the Moon and back to Earth.
NASA is publishing near‑real‑time position and status updates for the flight through its Artemis Real‑time Orbit Website (AROW), available on desktop and via NASA’s mobile app. The tracker plots Orion’s flight path, reports live speed and distance from both Earth and the Moon, and highlights mission milestones and historical lunar context. The smartphone app also includes an augmented‑reality feature that lets users orient their device to see Orion’s location relative to Earth. NASA says the data feed comes directly from Orion’s onboard sensors to Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Onboard the capsule on April 3, the crew ran rehearsals and maintenance drills as they prepared for the close approach and observations scheduled later in the flight. NASA reported the astronauts spent the day practicing procedures they will execute during the sixth‑day lunar pass, running through surface observation plans and choreography for critical maneuvers. They also used the mission’s Flywheel exercise device to maintain fitness in microgravity and conducted safety‑related demonstrations including cardiopulmonary resuscitation and an inventory and evaluation of the onboard medical kit.
Mission Specialist Christina Koch was assigned to systems testing that day, carrying out checks of Orion’s emergency communications link using NASA’s Deep Space Network during the latter half of April 3. Those checks are part of a broader verification program on Artemis II to validate life‑support, navigation and communications hardware and procedures with a crew aboard—data that will help certify systems for future Artemis missions intended to establish a longer‑term human presence at the Moon.
The Artemis II crew had arrived in Florida on March 27 and completed a preflight quarantine before launch. Wiseman is making his second trip to space, having flown to the International Space Station in 2014; Glover flew on a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to the ISS in 2020; Koch, who holds several agency records, previously flew to the station in 2019; and Hansen is making his first spaceflight as part of Canada’s contribution to the Artemis programme.
As Orion continues its outbound trajectory, NASA’s public tracker and imagery from the capsule—an April 3 photo from inside Orion showed roughly one‑third of Earth framed in the capsule window—will provide live updates for the remainder of the 10‑day mission. The agency plans the lunar close approach on day six to validate Orion’s performance in the deep‑space environment before the spacecraft returns to Earth.