A few minutes before 2PM ET on Monday, the crew of Artemis II broke a record set 56 years ago by the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission — at over 248,655 miles, they have now traveled farther from Earth than any humans before them. They marked the occasion with a crater naming ceremony that left the whole crew embracing each other in lunar orbit.

The Artemis II crew proposed names for two craters on the Moon. The first they named after their spacecraft, Integrity. The second was more personal. “A number of years ago, we started this journey and our close-knit astronaut family, and we lost a loved one,” mission specialist Jeremy Hansen said during NASA’s livestream. “Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie.”

On April 15th, 1970, Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert set a distance record when Apollo 13 traveled 248,655 miles from Earth. Nearly 56 years later, the crew of Artemis II is expected to break that record by several thousand miles when the Orion spacecraft reaches a maximum distance of 252,757 miles away from Earth later today as it completes its flight around the far side of the Moon.

NASA’s coverage of the lunar flyby begins at 1PM ET today if you want to follow along at home, while the astronauts are expected to set the new distance record from Earth at 1:56PM ET. The trip around the far side of the Moon will take about six hours and include observations of the lunar surface never before seen by humans, as well as surveys to identify possible landing locations for future missions.

On Thursday, during Artemis II’s journey to the Moon, commander Reid Wiseman ran into a tech issue some of us back on Earth can relate to: Microsoft Outlook wasn’t working. In a conversation captured in NASA’s Artemis livestream and shared on Bluesky, Wiseman reported to Mission Control: “I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working.”

To take care of the issue, Mission Control had to remotely access Wiseman’s personal computing device (PCD), a Microsoft Surface Pro. During a press conference on Thursday, Artemis flight director Judd Frieling said NASA had fixed the issue, stating, “This is not uncommon. We have this on-station all the time. You know, sometimes Outlook has issues getting configured, especially when you don’t have a network that’s directly connected. And so essentially we just had to reload his files on Outlook to get it working.”

NASA’s Artemis II flight, which is set to take four astronauts toward the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, successfully launched on Wednesday evening.

The Artemis II mission, part of NASA’s Artemis program that’s intended to bring humans back onto the Moon as early as 2028, will bring the four astronauts in orbit around the Moon on the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen, will make the trip aboard the Orion crew capsule, and the full mission is expected to be a 10-day journey. The mission was delayed in February due to a helium supply issue.

With NASA planning to launch four astronauts on Wednesday on its Artemis II mission, the race to return to the Moon is back on. The current mission will see astronauts aboard the Orion capsule travel around the Moon before returning to Earth in 10 days’ time. They’ll be testing out the hardware and systems that could soon see Americans standing on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years in the Artemis IV mission scheduled for 2028. NASA isn’t ready to land people on the Moon just yet, but that’s the aim for the next five years: to not only get people onto the Moon but establish a lengthy human presence on its surface.

That’s NASA’s selling point of Artemis, compared to the Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s — we won’t just be visiting the Moon for a few days, but rather inhabiting it for a long period of time. Exactly how long is still unclear, but the idea is to build a Moon base that allows astronauts to live on the lunar surface for weeks or even months at a time.

As a result of cold weather and windy conditions moving through Florida, NASA is now targeting Monday, February 2nd for a wet dress rehearsal of the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Depending on how Monday’s rehearsal goes, NASA will potentially set a launch date for Artemis II. But as a result of the weather-related delays, NASA says February 6th and 7th “are no longer viable opportunities” for a launch. Sunday, February 8th will instead be the first potential window.

NASA originally planned to conduct the wet dress rehearsal for the rocket this weekend, which is currently stacked with the Orion spacecraft on Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center. The 49 hour rehearsal includes fueling the rocket (hence the term wet) and a simulated countdown that ends 33 seconds before launch. During the rehearsal NASA engineers will test emergency escape procedures at the launch site and collect data from the SLS. A full wet rehearsal must be completed before the Artemis II mission will be cleared for launch next week.

NASA has, once again, postponed the Artemis missions that will return humans to the Moon. The Artemis II mission, which will have astronauts orbiting the Moon, had already been pushed from 2024 to September 2025 but is now planned for April 2026. Artemis III, which will return astronauts to the surface of the Moon near its south pole, is now planned to launch the following year in mid-2027.

The 10-day Artemis II mission will send four astronauts to the Moon, including Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen. The mission won’t include a landing, but it will be the first time astronauts launch aboard NASA’s Space Launch System rocket inside the Orion crew capsule that will orbit the Moon before returning to Earth with a planned splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

After asking both SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop cargo landers for its Artemis missions, NASA has announced plans to use those landers to deliver heavy equipment to the Moon.

The agency wants Elon Musk’s SpaceX to use its Starship cargo lander to deliver a pressurized rover to the Moon “no earlier” than 2032, while Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will be tasked with delivering a lunar surface habitat no sooner than 2033. Both launches will support NASA’s Artemis missions, which aim to bring humans back to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years.

NASA has selected Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab to develop the lunar terrain rover for its Artemis lunar explorations. All three companies are in the running for task orders with a potential value of $4.6 billion over the next 13 years.

The trio will develop their team’s ideas for a Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) to help astronauts explore the Moon’s south polar region. It’s believed the area contains frozen water, so it makes sense for NASA to set up base camp there.