Artemis II astronauts nearly halfway to the moon; NASA shares stunning photos from Orion spacecraft

The four astronauts on the Artemis II mission are nearly halfway to the moon since launching Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center.

"Since [Thursday’s] trans-lunar injection burn to send the crew around the moon, the mission continues to perform well overall, and the crew is in great spirits," Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA’s exploration systems, said at a news conference Friday.

"Currently, the crew is more than 100,000 miles from Earth and about 150,000 miles to go away from the moon.

"We call amazing things that humans do moonshots for a reason, and, indeed, this is literally and symbolically our moonshot that we are in the middle of."

NASA RACES TO BUILD MOON BASE AS US CHALLENGES CHINA IN NEW SPACE RACE