Keep pulling the thread on Artemis II.
The Artemis II Orion spacecraft is scheduled to enter the lunar sphere of influence, the point where the Moon's gravity becomes stronger than Earth's, at 12:40 a.m. Eastern Time.
The Artemis II mission will break the Apollo 13 distance record of 248,655 statute miles from Earth.
The Artemis II Orion spacecraft will reach a maximum distance of 252,760 miles from Earth, which is 4,105 miles farther than Apollo 13.
The closest approach of the Artemis II Orion spacecraft to the Moon will be 4,070 miles.
The Artemis II mission is the first opportunity for NASA's science and engineering teams to work together in real time while a crew is at the moon.
The Artemis II crew performed a manual piloting activity where they deselected some thrusters to characterize the Orion spacecraft's performance with disabled thrusters.
The Artemis II crew conducted activities to characterize the carbon dioxide removal capability of the Orion spacecraft, and the results have been very favorable to date.
The Artemis II Orion spacecraft will perform its third outbound trajectory correction maneuver, a 9.9 feet per second burn lasting approximately 14 seconds using auxiliary thrusters.
The first two trajectory correction maneuvers for the Artemis II mission were skipped because the Orion spacecraft was on a pinpoint trajectory.
NASA will test the Orion spacecraft's optical communication system by increasing its bandwidth to 100 megabits per second with the ground station in White Sands, New Mexico.
The Artemis II mission has 10 lunar science objectives, all of which are covered in the targets for the upcoming flyby.
During the lunar flyby, the Artemis II crew will be able to see the Apollo 12 and Apollo 14 landing sites.