Astronauts head home after record-breaking moon trip

The crew of NASA's Artemis II mission have started the journey home after creating history on their pass behind the moon.

The four astronauts flew deeper into space than any humans before them, as they cruised through a flyby of the shadowed far side of the moon that revealed new views of the hidden lunar surface.

A total solar eclipse greeted the three Americans and one Canadian as the moon temporarily blocked the sun from their perspective.

Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn nodded at them from the black void. The landing sites of Apollo 12 and 14 were also visible, poignant reminders of NASA's first age of exploration more than half a century ago.

In an especially riveting retro throwback, Artemis II shattered the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

NASA's Orion capsule reached a maximum distance of 406,771 kilometres from earth before hanging a U-turn behind the moon, 6600km further than Apollo 13.

"It is blowing my mind what you can see with the naked eye from the moon right now. It is just unbelievable," Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen radioed.

He challenged "this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived".

About two dozen scientists packed a conference room next to mission control at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston to record the lunar phenomena witnessed by the Artemis crew in real time.

US President Donald Trump phoned the astronauts following the flyby, calling them "modern-day pioneers".

"Today you've made history and made all America really proud, incredibly proud," the president said, adding that more lunar travelling is coming and ultimately "the whole big trip to Mars".

Artemis, a successor to the Apollo program, aims to put boot prints on the moon again by 2028, ahead of China's first landing, and to establish a long-term US lunar presence over the next decade, including a moon base.

The Artemis II crew, riding in their Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, began their sixth day of spaceflight as they awoke to a pre-recorded message from the late NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, who flew aboard the Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 moon missions.

"Welcome to my old neighbourhood," said Lovell, who died in 2025 at age 97. "It's a historic day, and I know how busy you'll be, but don't forget to enjoy the view ... good luck and godspeed."

Hours later, in the early hours of Tuesday AEST, the crew consisting of US astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch along with Hansen, made spaceflight history by venturing farther from earth than any humans have before.

Along the way, the Artemis crew spent some time assigning provisional names to lunar features that previously lacked official designations.

In a radio message to mission control in Houston, Hansen suggested one crater be dubbed Integrity, after the name given to the crew's Orion capsule, and another Carroll, in honour of Wiseman's late wife.

Wiseman wept as Hansen put in the request to mission control, and all four astronauts embraced in tears.

As Orion hurtled around the moon's far side, the crew witnessed its surface as it eclipsed what appeared to be a basketball-sized earth in the distant background.

The lunar flyby plunged the crew into darkness and a 40-minute communications blackout as the moon blocked them from NASA's Deep Space Network.

With AP