@adamshostack short answer is it's a longer route

@brianvastag Pretty sure the moon's in the same place, Brian :)

@adamshostack they're using something called a free-return trajectory, which means they do a single burn to leave Earth orbit and head to the moon. They circle the moon but don't orbit it and won't burn their engine again, whereas Apollo used their engine to break lunar orbit and return to Earth.

@adamshostack This is basically a way to reduce risk...if Artemis were to orbit the moon they'd have to do a lunar orbit injection burn and a return burn and apparently NASA isn't that confident in the Orion spacecraft.