The next neighborhood

The moon isn’t just in our back yard. It’s an entirely different neighborhood.

Last night, NASA’s Artemis II lunar mission launched — the first in more than 50 years.

But we send astronauts into space all the time, right?

Yes.

The International Space Station is in Low Earth Orbit — about 250 miles away.

But the moon? That’s 250 thousand miles.*

For comparison, consider airline travel. A jet might fly 500 miles per hour. At that speed, the distance to the ISS would take about 30 minutes.

And if a jet could travel to the moon? That’s a 20-day nonstop flight.

Farther than we tend to imagine.

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* The distance between Earth and the moon varies by phase. Today, they’re about 245,000 miles apart.