Artemis: NASA's Orion Capsule Breaks Distance Record

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The US space agency's Orion capsule has reached a key milestone on its demonstration mission around the Moon. On Monday, it moved some 430,000km (270,000 miles) beyond the Earth -- the furthest any spacecraft designed to carry humans has travelled. The ship is uncrewed on this occasion, but if it completes the current flight without incident, astronauts will be on the next outing in two years' time. The previous record for the most distant point reached by a human-rated spacecraft was set by the Apollo-13 mission in April 1970. It went out to 400,171km (248,655 miles) from Earth as its crew fought to navigate their way home following an explosion in their capsule's service module. Monday's milestone marks the middle point of the mission. 'This halfway point teaches us to number our days so that we can get a heart of wisdom,' said Mike Sarafin, Nasa's Artemis mission manager.

'The halfway point affords us an opportunity to step back and then look at what our margins are and where we could be a little smarter to buy down risk and understand the spacecraft's performance for crewed flight on the very next mission.'

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