Artemis II commander feared crew was lost after distance error

The Daily Mail reported that Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman feared he and his three crew members would be lost in space after their spacecraft strayed too far from Earth during a lunar flyby. Wiseman explained that after reaching their scheduled maximum distance over the dark side of the Moon, the odometer on the spacecraft continued to rise instead of stopping. [1]

According to the Daily Mail, the four-person crew reached a maximum distance from Earth of 219,669 nautical miles, or 252,756 standard miles. The astronauts were scheduled to begin their return journey after the flyby, but the continuing rise in distance caused temporary concern before they were slingshot back toward Earth. The mission set a new record for the furthest distance humans have ever travelled. [1][4]

Artemis II was a ten-day crewed flyby mission sent on a free-return trajectory around the Moon. As FTMQ News reported earlier, the crew included NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman as commander, Victor Glover as pilot, and Christina Koch as mission specialist, alongside Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. [2][4][7]

The mission marked the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and was the first crewed flight of NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The Orion capsule was named Integrity by the crew. [2]