The spacecraft “Orion“, carrying the crew of the Artemis 2 lunar mission, is halfway to Earth, NASA announced in X.
The astronauts are expected to return to Earth on April 10 at 8:07 p.m. Eastern Time (3:07 a.m. Bulgarian time on April 11). According to NASA plans, “Orion“ is scheduled to land off the coast of San Diego, California.
The SLS rocket, carrying The Orion spacecraft, part of the Artemis 2 mission, was launched on April 1 at 6:35 p.m. local time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA astronauts Reed Weissman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, completed a flyby of the Moon during the mission, breaking the record for the farthest humans have traveled from Earth.
The mission is expected to last 10 days. The last manned mission to the Moon was in December 1972, as part of the American Apollo 17 mission.