The four astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission circled the moon today in their Orion spacecraft. For about seven hours, they observed features of the lunar service and took photos, writes NBC NEWS.

At their closest, the crew members flew within 4,067 miles of the moon's surface.

The astronauts viewed never-before-seen parts of the moon’s surface: areas on the far side that aren’t visible from Earth.

Even the Apollo astronauts couldn’t view the moon’s far side in this way because of the paths and timing of their flights. At their farthest point from Earth, the astronauts were more than 252,000 miles away. They broke the Apollo 13 record for the greatest distance any humans have traveled from our planet.

The astronauts lifted off Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, then spent around 25 hours circling the Earth. Orion left Earth orbit Thursday evening, then entered the lunar sphere of influence - where the pull of the moon's gravity is stronger than Earth’s - early today. The crew is expected to return to Earth on Friday evening with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.