World News for Students of English

13-04-2026 15:00

Four astronauts aboard the Artemis II mission have officially broken a 55-year-old distance record.

On Monday, April 6th, 2026, the crew reached a point 406,778 kilometers from Earth and surpassed the previous record set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970.

This historic flight is the first manned journey to the lunar vicinity in over five decades. During their mission, the crew performed a lunar flyby, traveling around the far side of the moon—a region that remains hidden from Earth’s view. While passing behind the moon, the spacecraft’s communication with NASA was temporarily blocked by the moon’s mass.

This mission serves as a critical test flight for the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), as it checks essential human-centric features like radiation shielding and emergency procedures before future moon landings.

Difficult words: vicinity (the area near or around a specific place), flyby (a flight of a spacecraft past a planet or moon, usually to take pictures or collect data, without landing), human-centric (designed or created specifically for people and their needs).

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