Artemis 2 halfway to the Moon, the first inhabited spacecraft since 1972

Aboard Orion, they can already see Earth shrinking. The four astronauts of Artemis 2 have crossed the symbolic halfway mark of their journey to the Moon, more than 219.000 kilometers from us according to the tracking provided by NASA.

Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen are experiencing something humanity hasn't known since the end of Apollo: truly venturing farther, leaving the relative comfort of low Earth orbit, that of the ISS, to return to the vast blackness. The images do the rest: that "little blue ball" caught in mid-air by a porthole, a passing sun, and the very real sense that space isn't a video but a gamble.

Orion is in "free return" mode, with no possibility of reversing.

But this gamble also hinges on an implacable mechanism. Their so-called "free return" trajectory is an elegant calculation: Orion is attracted by the Moon and then propelled back towards Earth without having to fire its engines like a madman. Elegant, yes, but demanding, because once the translunar injection thrust is complete, there's no "turn around" button: the spacecraft must reach the lunar neighbor before it can return. In the cabin, the crew recounts their daily routine, the systems being tested, the moments glued to the windows. "We're all glued to the spot," Jeremy Hansen remarked, while Christina Koch confided that "nothing can prepare you" for the emotion. Behind these simple words lies a technical reality: this is Orion's first crewed flight, and every hour of operation counts.

NASA plans a flyby of the far side of the Moon on Monday, before returning to Earth on April 10, without a lunar landing. This mission, the first to include a woman, a person of color, and a non-American on a lunar flight, primarily aims to validate the spacecraft and the sequence of operations that should pave the way for more ambitious journeys. And incidentally, it's also a political reminder: Washington intends to maintain its influence on the Moon with a costly, scrutinized, and debated program that puts America back at the center of the space race. If all goes well, the Moon will once again become a working horizon, not a black-and-white memory, and the future will unfold according to budgets, tests, and upcoming launch windows.