In outer space, history is being made by three men and a woman aboard an Artemis II space mission that launched last week from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Their 10-day trip around the moon is the first crewed mission to deep space in 54 years. It takes the astronauts farther from Earth than any human has gone.

The crew members are Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, plus Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency. (Koch is the first woman to orbit the moon and Glover is the first Black astronaut reaching deep space.) Last Friday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shared stunning photos of Earth snapped by Wiseman. The highlight comes Monday (April 6) with a flyby of the moon – a loop about 4,000 miles above the lunar surface to photograph its far side and test spacecraft systems. The crew will lose contact with controllers for about 40 minutes while on what's called the dark side of the moon. There's no landing, unlike in July 1969 when NASA spacemen Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first Americans to walk on the moon. Three years later, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent over three days on the lunar surface – the last Americans to go there.

The current voyage, which follows a crewless Artemis I launch in 2022 that orbited the moon twice, is a key step toward an ambitious goal of a continuously staffed Artemis Base Camp on the moon's south pole, where ice thought could be extracted and used for drinking and as a source of hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel to propel crewed missions to Mars. "Each milestone we reach marks meaningful progress on the path forward for the Artemis program," a NASA statement says.

Its target for the next lunar landing is early 2028 by Artemis III. NASA is in a space race with China, which plans to send its first crew to the lunar surface by 2030 and which also envisions a moon base as a stepping stone to Mars. Artemis II is scheduled to splash down Friday in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego, Calif. Before their four-day flight back, the crew will be nearly a quarter-million miles from Earth.

Astronaut says: "You [Earth] look amazing, you look beautiful. . . . No matter where you are from or what you look like, we're all one people." – Victor Glover, reacting Friday to views of our planet

Space agency says: "We're learning from each step. Through Artemis, NASA will explore more of the moon than ever before and create an enduring presence in deep space." – Dr. Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator of NASA.

Specialist says: "There is a possibility that China will get to the moon first [this century]." – Quentin Parker, University of Hong Kong director of the Laboratory for Space Research