Hello there and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
I'm Sean Lay and we're coming to you live from the BBC studios in London.
There are two moments of significance for the crew of the Artemis II space mission to experience today.
Just over three hours ago, the four astronauts boldly went,
where no human has been before, deeper into space as their Orion capsule reached the far side of the moon.
On April 15th, 1970, during the Apollo 13 mission,
Three explorers set the record for the farthest distance humans have ever travelled from our home planet.
At that time, over 55 years ago, Lovell, Swigert and Hayes flew 248,655 statute miles away from Earth.
Today, for all humanity, you're pushing beyond that frontier.
Out in space, and the mission commander, Reid Wiseman, spoke of that historic moment.
And just over two and a half hours from now, when it 's around 6.47 in the evening on the US East Coast,
the familiar reassuring background chatter from ground control at Houston will abruptly cease.
For 40 or 50 minutes, they may feel quite alone in the universe.
At least they have each other, should they wish to break that silence.
In 1969, aboard the command module for the Apollo moon landings, Michael Collins did not have even that.
With Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin making their giant leap for mankind on the lunar surface,
both they and mission control were out of contact.
Collins described the experience in his 1974 memoir,
Carrying the Fire, and a loyal NewsHour listener in the United States kindly lent us his voice to read this excerpt.
Far from feeling lonely or abandoned, I feel very much a part of what is taking place on the lunar surface.