Artemis 2 and Tiangong reach humanity’s greatest space separation yet

Artemis 2’s Orion capsule, Integrity, and China's Tiangong space station set the farthest distance ever between humans in space, peaking at about 260,754 miles (419,643 km) on April 6. The Artemis-ISS distance was slightly less, and the previous record traceable to Apollo 13 was from 1970. Space historian Jonathan McDowell notes the milestone signals a shift from measuring how far humans are from Earth to how dispersed human civilization could become across the solar system.