Artemis II astronauts spent Monday rounding the moon‘s edge, digital cameras in hand, snapping views of craters, an eclipse, and a blue marble rising and setting in deep house.
Inside NASA‘s Orion spacecraft, Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen took turns on the home windows like youngsters on their first aircraft trip.
They spent about seven hours rotating by way of statement shifts on the sixth day of the mission, swapping lenses, calling out options, and firing off images because the spacecraft arced across the far facet of the moon.
At closest strategy, they skimmed inside about 4,000 miles of the lunar floor — shut sufficient for each ridge, crater, and shadow to snap into sharp aid. The astronauts stunned mission management with descriptions of the floor showing extra brown than grey, with even some splotches of inexperienced and snowy white.
The newest Artemis II pictures do not simply revisit Apollo — they mark a leap past it. Apollo crews captured their very own iconic photographs of the Earth and moon, however Artemis II delivered longer appears to be like, sharper element, and a front-row seat to the expertise. Their prolonged complete photo voltaic eclipse, for instance, was a second that earlier NASA missions might solely catch in passing, if in any respect. That’s the distinction between spaceflight half a century in the past and the 10-day Artemis journey that launched April 1.
“At one point towards the end of the images of my time in Window 3, I just had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon,” Koch mentioned. “It lasted just a second or two, and I actually couldn’t even make it happen again, but something just drew me in suddenly to the lunar landscape, and it became real.”
The day Earth slipped behind the moon: the Artemis II crew’s eclipse
Up shut, moon craters seem like rain drops deforming sand on a seashore.
Credit: NASA
The moon did not precisely sit nonetheless for its portrait. Sunlight slid low throughout the floor, throwing lengthy, dramatic shadows alongside the terminator — that line between gentle and shadow throughout the lunar face — turning acquainted terrain into one thing theatrical. When it was Glover’s flip on the window, he could not cease learning the ominous boundary.
“There’s just so much magic in the terminator,” he mentioned, “the islands of light, the valleys that would look like black holes [that] you’d fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in.”
The huge Mare Orientale basin unfurled in rings of mountains, its darkish, hardened lava flooring a testomony to historic eruptions. The crew prompt names — Carroll and Integrity — for smaller “fresh” craters, to honor Wiseman’s late spouse and their spacecraft.
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The Artemis II crew noticed an Earthset earlier than a complete photo voltaic eclipse on its lunar flyby April 6, 2026.
Credit: NASA
“Something that’s truly awesome up here is we now have the moon and the Earth in Window 3 simultaneously, and the moon is a gibbous, and the Earth is a crescent,” Wiseman mentioned. “I’m guessing in about 45 minutes, we’ll have two identical crescents as we change our position in the universe.”
That made Kelsey Young, head of Artemis’s science flight operations, actually giggle from mission management in Houston.
Artemis II captured an Earthrise view because the Orion spacecraft reemerged from the far facet of the moon.
Credit: NASA
“That is pretty darn cool, thank you,” she mentioned.
Then got here the stark perspective shift.
The moon looms giant because the Earth units within the distance.
Credit: NASA
As Orion slipped behind the moon, Earth started to sink. In one body, it hangs as a skinny crescent, clouds swirling over the Pacific, the remainder of the planet swallowed by night time. Minutes later, the crew misplaced contact with Earth solely, minimize off for about 50 minutes because the moon itself blocked radio alerts.
And, maybe simply to boost the stakes, the sky went darkish.
For almost an hour, the astronauts bought to expertise a complete photo voltaic eclipse from house, with the moon blocking the solar.
Credit: NASA
From their vantage level, the astronauts watched the moon swallow the solar in a complete photo voltaic eclipse that stretched virtually an hour. The solar’s corona glowed, stars pricked by way of the darkness, and even Venus made a cameo. But the backlit moon stole the present.
Not lengthy after, Earth got here again — this time rising. A pale blue crescent emerged from past the bumpy lunar floor in a historic Earthrise.
As the moon blocks the solar, making a photo voltaic eclipse for the astronauts, Venus, left, glints brightly from past.
Credit: NASA
NASA says the photographs will assist scientists higher perceive how big asteroid impacts form worlds, and the way the moon constructed its battered floor over billions of years. Those craters, ever etched in its floor, log the historical past of the photo voltaic system.
But in addition they do one thing extra profound: make us cherish dwelling.
The Artemis II crew sees the solar peak out from behind the moon because the Orion spacecraft reemerges from the far facet.
Credit: NASA
“The truth is the moon really is its own body in the universe. It’s not just a poster in the sky that goes by,” Koch mentioned. “When we have that perspective, and we compare it to our home of the Earth, it just reminds us how much we have in common, everything we need, the Earth provides, and that, in and of itself, is somewhat of a miracle.”
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UPDATE: Apr. 7, 2026, 2:04 p.m. EDT This article has been up to date with an extra quote from pilot Victor Glover.