On Flight Day 4 of the historic Artemis 2 mission, the crew—including Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen—stepped up deep-space operations as the Orion spacecraft crossed the 270,369 kilometres (168,000 miles)-mark from Earth.
With the second outbound trajectory correction burn officially canceled due to a highly accurate translunar injection, Mission Control instead directed the crew to troubleshoot a wastewater vent line issue by reorienting the spacecraft to use solar heat for thawing.
The day featured a heavy focus on science and spacecraft handling. The crew checked in on the AVATAR organ-on-a-chip payload to study deep-space human immune stressors, participated in live media events, and successfully executed manual piloting demonstrations. Hansen and NASA astronaut Christina Koch took turns manually flying Orion, testing its six-degree-of-freedom attitude controls to give engineers critical deep-space handling data.
As Orion closed to within 122,310 kilometres (76,000 miles) of the Moon’s surface, the crew officially transitioned their altitude reference from Earth to the Moon, reporting breathtaking, 3D-like views of lunar features such as the Imbrium and Orientale basins.