The Artemis astronauts were gearing up Saturday (April 4, 2026) for their long-anticipated lunar flyby, including reviewing the surface features they must analyze and photograph during their time circling the Moon.

“Morale is high on board,” commander Reid Wiseman told Houston’s Mission Control center as the space crew’s work day began.

Upon waking around 1635 GMT on Saturday (April 4), the astronauts were approximately 169,000 miles (271,979 kilometers) from Earth, and approaching the Moon at 110,700 miles (178,154 kilometers), according to NASA.

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The next major milestone of the approximately 10-day journey is expected overnight Sunday into Monday, at which point the astronauts will enter the “lunar sphere of influence” — when the Moon’s gravity will have stronger pull on the spacecraft than Earth’s.

If all proceeds smoothly, as Orion whips around the Moon the astronauts could set a record by venturing farther from Earth than any human before.

The astronauts kicked off their day with a meal that included scrambled eggs and coffee, NASA said, and had woken up to the tune of Chappell Roan’s pop smash “Pink Pony Club.”

Wiseman along with fellow Americans Christina Koch and Victor Glover as well as Canadian Jeremy Hansen are on a historic journey around the Moon, which they’re soon due to slingshot around.

It’s a feat Wiseman has dubbed “Herculean” and which humanity has not accomplished in more than half-a-century.

Later on Saturday (April 4), Glover was due to perform a manual piloting demonstration to provide NASA with more data regarding the spacecraft’s performance in deep space.

After that, the crew was planning to go over their checklist for documenting their experience traveling around the Moon.

The astronauts have had geology training in order to be able to photograph and describe lunar features, including ancient lava flows and impact craters.

They’ll see the Moon from a unique vantage point compared with the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s.

Apollo flights flew some 70 miles above the lunar surface, but the Artemis 2 crew will be just over 4,000 miles at their closest approach, which will allow them to see the complete, circular surface of the Moon, including regions near both poles.

‘Amazing’

The crew has been busy taking photographs including with smartphones, devices NASA recently approved to take aboard spaceflights.

The space agency has released images from Orion that included a full portrait of Earth, featuring its deep blue oceans and billowing clouds.

NASA official Lakiesha Hawkins praised the photographs taken by commander Wiseman, calling them “amazing” during a briefing Friday.

“We continue to learn all about our spacecraft as we operate it in deep space with crew for the first time,” Hawkins said.

“It’s important to remind ourselves of that as we learn a little bit more day by day.”

The Artemis 2 mission is part of a longer-term plan to repeatedly return to the Moon, with the goal of establishing a permanent lunar base that will offer a platform for further exploration.

It’s a highly anticipated journey that demands exacting precision — but there’s still room for the astronauts to live out their childhood dreams of spaceflight.

“It just makes me feel like a little kid,” said Hansen recently, describing the joy of floating.

The four Artemis astronauts have passed the halfway point between Earth and the Moon on the way to their planned lunar flyby, NASA said on Friday (April 3, 2026) evening.

“You are now closer to the moon than you are to us on Earth,” mission control told the astronauts at around 11 p.m. (0400 GMT), according to the space agency’s official live broadcast.

“We all kind of had a collective, I guess, expression of joy at that… We can see the Moon out of the docking hatch right now, it is a beautiful sight,” said astronaut Christina Koch replied.

The milestone was hit around two days, five hours and 24 minutes after liftoff, according to the NASA official broadcast.

The U.S. space agency’s online dashboard showed that the Orion spacecraft carrying the astronauts is now more than 219,000 kilometres from Earth.

“We’re halfway there,” NASA posted on social media.

The spacecraft’s next milestone will be entering the lunar sphere of influence, set to take place on day five of the flight, according to NASA.

The astronauts — Americans Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Canadian Jeremy Hansen — are now on a “free-return” trajectory, which uses the Moon’s gravity to slingshot around it before heading back towards Earth without propulsion.

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

NASA released the crew’s 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 capsule’s windows. The second shows the entire globe with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds.

As of midmorning Friday (April 3, 2026), Mr. Wiseman and his crew were 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometers) from Earth and were quickly gaining on the moon with another 168,000 miles (270,000 kilometers) to go. They should reach their destination on Monday (April 6, 2026).

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.

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