April 6 (UPI) -- The four crew members of the Artemis II mission entered the moon's sphere of influence early Monday, marking the start of their lunar flyby.
The Orion spacecraft reached what is called the lunar sphere of influence at about 12:41 a.m. ET Monday, meaning the moon's gravitational forces on the capsule were greater than those of Earth.
The mission launched Wednesday from Florida, and it took the spacecraft four days, six hours, two minutes and 54 seconds to cross the important gravitational milestone, the first crewed mission to enter the moon's sphere of influence since Apollo 17 in 1972.
About 13 hours later, at 1:56 p.m., the four-person crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Cristina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen will have surpassed the record for the farthest humans have traveled from Earth, which was previously set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
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