Artemis II: Stunning New Images from the Moon

(SeaPRwire) –   The last time humans snapped photos near the moon, the world was a deeply analog place. Apollo astronauts carried cameras into space by hand and brought them back to Earth personally, where NASA technicians manually developed the physical film inside. No images could be shared with the public until all those steps were completed. (That’s why TIME featured a painting on the cover of its July 25, 1969 issue—right after Apollo 11 made the first crewed lunar landing.)

Today, things are quite different. The Artemis II crew— the first astronauts to travel to the moon since Apollo 17’s December 1972 mission—has been transmitting images taken with both digital cameras and iPhones ever since their April 1 launch. On April 6 (yesterday), they looped around the moon’s far side and sent back a flurry of photos showing the moon, Earth, and life inside the cockpit, where the four-person crew viewed both worlds through the spacecraft’s five windows. Below are some of the most striking shots from their awe-inspiring journey.

Unless you’ve been to the moon, you can’t see this particular part of it. The top of the image shows the large basins (or “seas”) that define the lunar hemisphere always facing Earth. The bottom half is part of the moon’s far side, which is never turned toward our planet. The dark spot in the center is the Orientale Basin—an ancient, 600-mile-wide lava flow that spans both the near and far sides.

Three hours into their orbit around the moon’s far side, the crew took this eye-catching, high-angle photo. The terminator—the line dividing the moon’s lit and dark sides—is visible at the top left. The sun’s low angle casts long, dramatic shadows that highlight the moon’s rough terrain. Such shadows helped Apollo crews navigate the landscape during their descent.

Right before wrapping up their lunar flyby, the crew witnessed a rare solar eclipse, where the moon’s dark mass blocked the sun’s bright disk. From Earth, the sun and moon appear the same size in the sky—explaining the brilliant solar corona that surrounds the moon during an eclipse. But from the Artemis II crew’s vantage point, the moon looked much larger than the sun, resulting in barely any visible coronal flare.

Just before turning in for the night at the end of a long workday on the fifth mission day, the crew snapped this picture of the moon through one of the spacecraft’s five windows. As they slept, the craft drifted into the moon’s sphere of influence—the point where lunar gravity takes over, pulling the ship away from Earth’s stronger but now distant gravitational pull.

At 7:32 PM on April 6, during their lunar flyby, the crew saw Earth’s blue and white crescent rising above the moon. The uneven lunar horizon at the top of the image partially hides Earth. The photo is oriented so that both bodies’ north poles are on the left and their south poles are on the right.

The center of this image features the Vavilov Crater, located near the smoother Hertzsprung Basin. The moon’s flat, mostly crater-free regions were formed by ancient lava flows. Once again, the sun’s low angle creates long, jagged shadows.

This is another partial shot of the total solar eclipse the crew saw during their flyby. On Earth, the total phase of a solar eclipse rarely lasts more than four minutes—often even less. But from the crew’s position, this eclipse went on for a full 54 minutes. The bright dot to the left of the image is the planet Venus.

Pilot Victor Glover (left) and mission specialist Christina Koch take turns at the windows, observing and photographing the moon. The crew spent a total of seven hours capturing lunar images. At their nearest point to the moon, they were only 4,067 miles from its surface.

Echoing the famous Earthrise photo from the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, the crew captured an “Earthset” as they watched the crescent Earth above the moon at 6:41 PM on April 6. The lit part of Earth shows the Australia and Oceania region. Ohm Crater is visible on the lunar surface.