Ground controllers have reestablished radio contact with the four astronauts of the Artemis II lunar mission as their spacecraft reemerged from behind the far side of the moon.

"It is so great to hear from Earth again," mission specialist Christina Koch said.

WATCH LIVE COVERAGE OF THE MISSION FROM NASA

The loss of signal began at roughly 6:45 Eastern Time and lasted roughly 40 minutes.

During this phase of the mission, the spacecraft reached its closest point relative to the lunar surface (about 4,067 miles), and its furthest point from Earth's surface (about 252,760 miles).

Earlier on Monday the four astronauts surpassed the previous distance record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970, when they traveled about 248,655 miles from Earth.

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The crew continued their observations and recordings of the lunar surface, capturing photos and videos and taking notes as they study parts of the moon that have never been seen before. They also witnessed an "Earthset" and an "Earthrise" as the moon temporarily blocked their view of Earth.

The crew also observed a solar eclipse as the moon passed between Integrity and the sun, and saw apparent impact flashes on the lunar surface. These flashes are believed to be byproducts of impacts from space debris and may give clues about the behavior and history of the solar system.

The spacecraft's internal lights were turned off so the crew could more easily see details on the relatively dim lunar surface. The astronauts have been issued cameras with zoom lenses to get a closer view of their target, and are recording voice notes as they make their observations.

The crew is working in shifts, spending time observing a list of prepared targets at the spacecraft windows and communicating regular updates to ground control. The observations and notes the astronauts make will be crucial for matching up to recorded data once the flyby is complete.

The mission marks a major step forward in NASAs efforts to return humans to deep space and eventually land astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years.

RELATED STORY | Artemis II astronauts lift off for historic mission around the moon

The launch of Artemis II has people across the country anxiously waiting for the spacecraft's return from its trip around the moon, especially in San Diego, where it is expected to splash down off the coast.

The pavilion at the San Diego Air & Space Museum is preparing to pack hundreds of people for a watch party on April 10 to witness the historic moment.

"This is the first time humans have returned to the moon since 1972," David Neville said.

Astronauts will not step foot on the moon during the Artemis II mission, but they will travel farther from Earth than any humans have ever gone before. The mission follows Artemis I from 2022, which involved an unmanned spacecraft and a similar watch party at the museum.

"What's really incredible is NASA has been planning for this mission for a very, very long time, and up to this point. Everything's worked perfectly. The space launch system that got them into space in the first place worked perfectly," Neville said.

When the astronauts return, they will splash down right off the San Diego coast.

"They're learning how future missions that go out in Orion space capsules can do what they're doing, do it for a little bit longer, and eventually with the goal of landing on the moon," Neville said.

Doors for the watch party will open around 4 p.m.

"It's supposed to splash down at about 5:09 our time Pacific on Friday. That is subject to change depending on how it goes when they slingshot around the moon," Neville said.

The museum encourages anyone interested in attending to show up early for fun activities. NASA experts will be at the event, along with a nine-foot model of the rocket.

"We're trying to inspire young men and women to look and see, I want to be that person that's up in that space capsule. I want to be the next person to step on the moon," Neville said.

With all of San Diego watching the historical event, the hope is the next astronaut is in the crowd.

The Artemis II crew was about halfway between the moon and Earth on Saturday as they prepared for a lunar flyby on Monday.

The four-person team is carrying enough food to sustain the missions 10 days in space, but the menu differs from other missions.

Artemis II astronauts dine from a fixed, preselected menu designed for a self-contained spacecraft with no resupply unlike the International Space Station, which receives regular deliveries and can offer fresh food.

During Apollo missions, astronauts relied on lightweight, rehydrated meals. Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman once called the food unappetizing.

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While NASA must still consider space limitations when developing Artemis meals, astronauts now have a broader selection. The one requirement: food must be shelf-stable and require no refrigeration.

Another factor is microgravity. Meals must be easy to consume and minimize crumbs.

Beverages are also restricted. Astronauts can choose only two flavored drinks per day options include coffee, green tea and various juices because of weight limits.

NASA said the Orion spacecraft carries 189 unique food items, including tortillas, flatbread, quiche, brisket, cauliflower macaroni and cheese, and almonds.

The Artemis II crew has direct input into menu selection, NASA said. Crew members sample, evaluate and rate all foods on the standard menu during preflight testing, and their preferences are balanced with nutritional requirements and what Orion can accommodate. Final, crew-specific menus are set well before launch. Two to three days worth of food for each crew member is packed together in a single container, providing flexibility for meal selection during the mission.

How the food tastes in space

Now that astronauts are several days into their mission, theyve had time to test the menu. It turns out food in space doesn't taste too different than on Earth.

For me so far, I haven't really noticed much change, although I was expecting to notice it more, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said.

When asked if he brought any Canadian dishes aboard, Hansen said he enjoyed maple biscuits during the crews first day in space.

It was something fun at the end of a long day, he said.

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The Artemis II astronauts have captured our blue planets brilliant beauty as they zoom ever closer to the moon.

NASA released the crews first downlinked images Friday, 1 1/2 days into the first astronaut moonshot in more than half a century.

The first photo taken by commander Reid Wiseman shows a curved slice of Earth in one of the capsules windows. The second shows the entire globe with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds. A green aurora even glows, according to NASA.

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As of midmorning Friday, Wiseman and his crew were 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometers) from Earth and were quickly gaining on the moon with another 160,000 miles (258,000 kilometers) to go. They should reach their destination on Monday.

The three Americans and one Canadian will swing around the moon in their Orion capsule, hang a U-turn and then head straight back home without stopping. They fired Orion's main engine Thursday night that set them on their course.

After Mission Control shifted the position of their capsule, the entire Earth, complete with northern lights, filled their windows.

It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks, Wiseman said in a TV interview.

They're the first lunar travelers since Apollo 17 in 1972.

NASAs Artemis II astronauts fired their engines and blazed toward the moon Thursday night, breaking free of the chains that have trapped humanity in shallow laps around Earth in the decades since Apollo.

The so-called translunar ignition came 25 hours after liftoff, putting the three Americans and a Canadian on course for a lunar fly-around early next week. Their Orion capsule bolted out of orbit around Earth right on cue and chased after the moon to nearly 250,000 miles away.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am so, so excited to be able to tell you that for the first time since 1972 during Apollo 17, human beings have left Earth orbit, NASAs Lori Glaze announced at a news conference.

The engine firing was flawless, she noted.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said he and his crewmates were glued to the capsule's windows as they left Earth in the rearview mirror, taking in the phenomenal views.

Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of, and its your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the moon, he said.

NASA had the Artemis II crew stick close to home for a day to test their capsules life-support systems before clearing them for lunar departure.

Now committed to the moon, the Artemis II test flight is the opening act for NASAs grand plans for a moon base and sustained lunar living.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Hansen will dash past the moon then hang a U-turn and zip straight home without stopping on land. In the process, they will become the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth, breaking the Apollo 13 distance record set in 1970. They also may become the fastest during their reentry at flights end on April 10.

Glover, Koch and Hansen already have made history as the first Black, the first woman and the first non-U.S. citizen to launch to the moon. Apollos 24 lunar travelers were all white men.

To set the mood for the days main event, Mission Control woke up the crew with John Legends Green Light featuring Andre 3000 and a medley of NASA teams cheering them.

We are ready to go, Glover said.

ARTEMIS II LAUNCH | Artemis II astronauts lift off for historic mission around the moon

Mission Control gave the final go-ahead minutes before the critical engine firing, telling the astronauts that they were embarking on humanitys lunar homecoming arc to bring them back to Earth. The capsule is relying on the gravity of Earth and the moon termed a free-return lunar trajectory to complete the round-trip figure-eight loop. The engine accelerated their capsule to 24,000 mph to shove them out of Earth's orbit.

With this burn to the moon, we do not leave Earth. We choose it, Koch said.

The next major milestone will be Mondays lunar flyby.

Orion will zoom 4,000 miles beyond the moon before turning back, providing unprecedented and illuminated views of the lunar far side, at least for human eyes. The cosmos will even treat the Artemis II astronauts to a total solar eclipse as the moon temporarily blocks the sun from their perspective.

While awaiting their orbital departure earlier Thursday, the astronauts savored the views of Earth from tens of thousands of miles high. Koch told Mission Control that they can make out the entire coastlines of continents and even the South Pole, her old stomping ground.

NASA is counting on the test flight to kickstart the entire Artemis program and lead to a moon landing by two astronauts in 2028. Orions toilet may need some design tweaks before that happens.

The so-called lunar loo malfunctioned as soon as the Artemis crew reached orbit Wednesday evening. Mission Control guided astronaut Koch through some plumbing tricks and she finally got it going, but not before having to resort to using contingency urine storage bags.

Controllers also managed to bump up the cabin temperature. It was so cold earlier in the flight that the astronauts had to dig into their suitcases for long-sleeved clothes.

The contingency urine bags came in handy later in the day. Mission Control ordered the crew to fill a bunch of the empty bags with water from the capsules dispenser. A valve issue arose with the dispenser following liftoff, and NASA wanted plenty of drinking water on hand for the crew in case the problem worsened. The astronauts used straws and syringes to fill the pouches with more than 2 gallons worth before pivoting to the moon.

The launch of Artemis II Wednesday evening, marking humanitys return to the moon, was largely a success, but there was one stinky problem inside the Orion spacecraft.

As astronauts performed a burn to adjust the spacecrafts altitude while orbiting Earth, the crew noticed a blinking fault light on the toilet. NASA officials said the toilet appeared to be jammed after liftoff.

The crew and ground teams resolved the issue within several hours.

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It was among several problems NASA addressed after liftoff.

We had a controller issue with the toilet when they spun it up, so we've got to work through that, NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said.

He also noted communications were briefly intermittent and that a water tank was temporarily closed due to the shaking of the spacecraft.

The new toilet system, officially named the Universal Waste Management System, is far different from the one Apollo astronauts used on their journeys to the moon. Apollo astronauts urinated into diapers and bags, and stored solid waste in bags mixed with bactericide to bring back to Earth.

Orions toilet uses airflow to pull fluid and solid waste away from the body and into the proper containers. NASA says the toilet also has an automatic airflow feature that helps control odor.

Pretreated urine, which prevents the generation of ammonia from the breakdown of the urine, is stored in a urine tank and then vented overboard each day by the crew, much like the space shuttle, NASA said. Solid waste is collected in fecal canisters, which the crew replaces every few days, and stored in Orion for the 21-day mission. The canisters have filtered caps to control odor and gas buildup generated within the cans.

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The four-person crew is spending most of Thursday in low-Earth orbit. Thursday evening, the astronauts will perform a burn to leave low-Earth orbit and head toward the moon.

The astronauts are expected to reach the far side of the moon Monday before using a slingshot maneuver to return to Earth.

NASA on Wednesday launched Artemis II, a mission that will take four astronauts in a lap around the moon, farther from Earth than any humans before them.

Liftoff proceeded according to plan, NASA says. The rocket's first stage performed as expected and its booster engines and core stage separated on schedule.

The spacecraft is now in orbit around Earth, ready to enter its trajectory toward the moon. It will take several days for the mission to reach lunar orbit.

We have a beautiful moonrise," mission Commander Reid Wiseman told ground control following the launch. "Were headed right at it."

The crew includes astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

The mission has several key objectives, according to Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator for NASAs Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

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Those include testing spacecraft systems and life-support capabilities in a crewed environment, assessing astronauts ability to maneuver the spacecraft, and conducting rendezvous and docking demonstrations to prepare for future lunar landings.

Its about a 10-day mission, and we are looking to open up the door to the age of Artemis," Hawkins said.

The launch comes after relatively minor setbacks: NASA had to troubleshoot to ensure that commands would reach the spacecraft's flight-termination system, which would have allowed a self-destruct if the rocket left its course and posed a threat to people on the ground.

Once in space, Hawkins said the spacecraft will need to achieve a stable Earth orbit 24 hours after launch. The spacecraft will then perform a burn using its propulsion system and the moons gravity for assistance.

As it travels behind the moon, Earth will briefly lose contact with the crew during a short communications blackout.

"When they get on the backside of the moon, there will be a perspective that no human eye has ever seen before," Hawkins said.

After a lunar slingshot maneuver, which uses the moons gravity to propel the spacecraft back toward Earth, NASA will position the capsule for splashdown off the California coast.

The last time NASA sent astronauts to the moon was Apollo 17 in 1972.

NASAs Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft reached the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center on Friday morning as the agency prepares for humanitys return to the moon.

The rocket and spacecraft returned to the pad nearly a month after a wet dress rehearsal flagged several issues, delaying the launch.

The rocket was moved about four miles from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the pad.

Last week, NASA said the crew could lift off as soon as April 1, with additional launch opportunities later that month. The astronauts began a two-week prelaunch quarantine Wednesday.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will remain in isolation in Houston before flying to Florida five days ahead of the April 1 launch window.

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The latest delay came after engineers discovered an interrupted flow of helium to the rockets interim cryogenic propulsion stage. The mission had previously been postponed about four weeks after a rehearsal revealed a leak in Orions liquid hydrogen tank, which released excessive propellant into the rockets core stage.

Artemis I, launched in 2022, was the first mission in NASAs Artemis program, which aims for deep space exploration beyond the moon. While Artemis I was uncrewed, Artemis II will carry four astronauts on a lunar flyby.

NASA initially planned for Artemis III to be the first crewed lunar landing, but the mission will now test an uncrewed lander. Artemis IV is set to be the programs first crewed landing.

The last time NASA sent astronauts to the moon was Apollo 17 in 1972.

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It has been more than five decades since NASA sent astronauts to the moon whats another month?

NASAs planned Artemis II mission to send four astronauts around the moon has been delayed at least a few weeks after the agency discovered an issue with Orion's liquid hydrogen tank during a wet dress rehearsal Tuesday morning.

The launch had been scheduled for Friday but is now targeted for March.

NASA said the tank leaked too much liquid hydrogen into the rockets core stage. Liquid hydrogen is used as a propellant.

The agency also said a valve in the crew module needed retorquing.

Floridas Kennedy Space Center has been experiencing unusually cold conditions. NASA said the weather did not affect the wet dress rehearsal but could have been a factor if teams had proceeded with the Friday launch.

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Because of the delay, the four astronauts will be briefly released from quarantine. The crew will return to quarantine two weeks before the launch.

Despite the setbacks, NASA said engineers met many of the planned objectives.

With March as the potential launch window, teams will fully review data from the test, mitigate each issue, and return to testing ahead of setting an official target launch date, the agency said in a statement.

In 2022, Artemis I marked the first mission in the Artemis program, which NASA hopes will pave the way for deep space exploration beyond the moon. While Artemis I was uncrewed, Artemis II will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby. Artemis III is expected to include a crewed mission to the moons surface.

The last time NASA sent astronauts to the moon was in 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission.

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