Artemis II: everything you need to know about its lunar flyby

The mission becomes even more important because it breaks several historical milestones, with the crew made up of Canadian Jeremy Hansen and Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch marking the first time that a woman, a person of African descent and a non-US citizen participate in a lunar mission.

The Artemis II crew will also mark the greatest distance reached from Earth by a human being: 406,772 kilometers, surpassing the Apollo 13 record by 6,600 kilometers.

The flyby is scheduled to last around seven hours, starting at 18:45 GMT (13:45 Peruvian time) and ending around 01:20 GMT on April 7 (20:20 Peruvian time).

Here the schedule in several countries in the region:

Mexico (center), Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belize – Start: 12:45 (April 6) End: 19:20 (April 6)

Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Cuba – Start: 1:45 p.m. (April 6) End: 8:20 p.m. (April 6)

Bolivia, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico – Start: 2:45 p.m. (April 6) End: 9:20 p.m. (April 6)

Argentina, Uruguay, Chile (continental), Brazil (Brasilia) – Start: 15:45 (April 6) End: 22:20 (April 6)

United States Eastern Time – Start: 1:45 p.m. (April 6) End: 8:20 p.m. (April 6) / Pacific Time – Start: 11:45 (April 6) End: 18:20 (April 7)

The entire journey will be broadcast by NASA on its website, as well as platforms such as YouTube, Amazon and Netflix in a production that will feature not only the comments of experts, but also the interventions of the Artemis II crew members themselves.

NASA has warned that there will be a period of about 40 minutes during which communication with Artemis II will be zero, while the astronauts pass by the far side of the Moon.

This will not be the first time that humans have managed to see the hidden side of the satellite, with previous Apollo missions also glimpsed it decades ago and robotic devices also exploring it in more recent times such as the Chinese Chang’e-6 space mission in 2024.

However, scientists are still very interested in the information that this mission will bring and the Artemis II crew has been trained for years to describe the geological formations of the Moon as accurately as possible.

It will not be the only unprecedented sight that the astronauts will experience on their trip, who at the end of the flyby will glimpse the strange phenomenon of a solar eclipse.

Thus, for 53 minutes the ship will be perfectly aligned with the Moon and the Sun, causing the star to apparently disappear and the lunar satellite to acquire a luminous halo.

The crew is also expected to see an “Earth sunrise” similar to the one photographed by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, with our planet rising from the monochrome, cratered lunar horizon like an immense (and blue) Sun.

As impressive as the manned flyby to the Moon is, this is only a small step for the ambitious Artemis II space program, in which NASA hopes in the coming years to establish a permanent presence of humanity on the Moon and prepare for an exploration of Mars.

In any case, we will have to wait for Artemis IV, in 2028, for the first lunar landing in more than half a century, and for Artemis V, that same year, for the structure to begin to be built on the surface of the satellite.

The United States is not alone in its lunar ambitions and China is also preparing a mission to land on the south pole of the Moon in 2030.