At their closest, the crew is set to fly within 4,070 miles of the moon’s surface. They’ll spend nearly seven hours making observations, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
***
During the flyby, the astronauts will glimpse never-before-seen parts of the moon’s surface. Those areas on the far side are not visible from Earth, and even the Apollo astronauts couldn’t view much of the moon’s far side because of the paths and timing of their flights.
At their farthest point from Earth, the astronauts are expected to be more than 252,000 miles away, breaking the Apollo 13 record for the greatest distance any humans have traveled from our planet.
The astronauts lifted off Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, then spent around 25 hours circling the Earth. Orion left Earth orbit Thursday evening, then entered the lunar sphere of influence — where the pull of the moon’s gravity is stronger than Earth’s — early Monday. The crew is expected to return to Earth on Friday evening with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
