Artemis II ready to challenge Apollo 13's 50-year farthest-distance record

In April 1970, NASA launched its third mission to land on the moon, Apollo 13. Two days into the mission, before reaching the moon, an oxygen tank aboard the Odyssey command module exploded, forcing the crew to cancel the lunar landing. The three-man crew performed a flyby of the moon and returned to Earth, never touching the lunar surface.

The lunar flyby put the crew of Apollo 13, Commander Jim Lovell, Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert, and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise, in the record books for achieving the farthest distance from Earth of any other space mission: 248,655 miles. That record has been held for over 50 years.

Artemis II Mission

NASA is now preparing to launch the Artemis II mission on Wednesday with a four-person crew. A mission that will perform a lunar flyby, like Apollo 13, and possibly set a new record for the furthest distance from Earth. But Artemis II must launch by April 4 to break the Apollo 13 distance record.

The Artemis II crew includes Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialist Christina Koch from NASA, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.

The crew doesn't like to talk about breaking the Apollo 13 record. They say it's not very important to them. But again, it depends on the day they launch whether they will break the record.

NASA has a launch window between April 1 and 6 to get Artemis II into orbit. The mission’s furthest distance from Earth changes depending on which day they launch.

If Artemis II launches on April 1, they could reach 252,799 miles from Earth, breaking the Apollo 13 mission record by 4,144 miles. But NASA officials made it clear at a press conference on Monday that breaking the distance record isn’t important to them.

It's Not Important

“You want every mission to keep exploring and keep learning new things, and getting farther from Earth than we’ve ever been before is a fun statistic,” said Emily Nelson, NASA chief flight director. “But there are a lot of other things that are going to be a lot more exciting, for me at least.”

“It's not important to me,” said John Honeycutt, NASA’s Space Launch System program manager. “I told you guys a few weeks ago, my main thing is hitting that entry interface right down the middle and getting the crew in the Pacific Ocean safety. That’s important to me, which means everything else worked great, or OK. Right?”

If Artemis II launches on April 4, 5, or 6, “you're not likely to exceed that Apollo [13] number,” Nelson added.

“Marking the milestone is, it's cool, right? It’s a fun thing for people to realize that people haven’t gone that far. I will tell you, we will not pick a burn plan or take any additional risks of the machine that makes sure that we hit that mark,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya told reporters. “It’ll be a happy accident of physics that it turned out that way.”