Artemis II broke Fred Haise’s distance record, but he is happy to pass it on | “It wasn’t a big deal. It just coincided with the fact that Moon was farther away from the Earth.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/artemis-ii-broke-fred-haises-distance-record-but-he-is-happy-to-pass-it-on/
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>With the circumlunar flight of Artemis II, and the prospect of landing astronauts on the lunar surface within a few years, humanity is preempting an era where the imprint of visiting the Moon would be erased from living memory.
>There are five men still alive who flew to the Moon on NASA’s Apollo missions. All are now in their 90s. Between 1968 and 1972, 24 astronauts visited the Moon, and 12 of them walked on its surface. We’ll have to wait a little longer to add to the roster of Moonwalkers, but there are four new names to etch on the list of lunar explorers.
>The Artemis II astronauts, all in their 40s or 50s, flew a little more than 4,000 miles from the Moon, higher above the surface than the Apollo lunar missions. The four-person crew on Artemis II set a new record for the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth: 252,756 miles (406,771 kilometers).
>Artemis II broke the record set on the Apollo 13 mission in April 1970, when astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise soared to a maximum distance from Earth of 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers). Ars recently visited with Haise to discuss his perspective on the record and the Artemis II mission, and we include the interview later in this story.
I just want to know who was on the side of the cabin furthest from Earth, because one of the 4 holds the record by a meter or so.
I feel like if I held that record, I’d be pretty sad to not see it broken in my lifetime, because that would mean progress on human spaceflight had stalled.
I hope in jest he opens a GoFundMe page to raise a bid to recapture it.
He lived across the bayou from my parents for many years. He and my dad often waved to one another as they were going in or out fishing in their boats.
Haise is the only of the three Apollo 13 astronauts to still be alive, while his actor (Bill Paxton) in the titular movie is the only one of the three to have died.
Ironic.
It must be weird for the surviving Apollo astronauts because the Artemis missions were basically exactly what was planned after Apollo.
But the fifty year delay opened up a lot of doors for new tech and new people: no way a woman and a Black man would have been on the missions on their original timeline.
Yes, them sitting on their ass In a can was a monumental personal achievement.
Apollo 13
248,655 miles
Artemis 2
252,756 miles
4,100 mile difference
The difference is trivial, yet it is being ballyhooed as an amazing achievement for humanity.
Meanwhile, New Horizons has visited Pluto and beyond. And Voyager left the solar system entirely, years ago, and is still functioning in interstellar space. It’s now nearly an entire light-day away from Earth, meaning radio signals take over 23 hours to reach it *moving at the speed of light*. That’s 172 Astronomical Units, 16,000,000,000 miles.