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See the Awe-Inspiring New Photos of the Moon and Earth Sent Back From the Artemis 2 Mission

The astronauts are on their way home after looping around the moon on a historic flyby. Here are the dazzling images they captured

Earth appears to rise over the moon
Earth appears to rise over the moon
Earth, partially illuminated, appears over the moon’s horizon at 6:41 p.m. Eastern time on Monday—just three minutes before the Artemis 2 astronauts reached the far side of the moon, initiating a communications blackout with NASA’s teams on the ground. NASA

See the Awe-Inspiring New Photos of the Moon and Earth Sent Back From the Artemis 2 Mission

The astronauts are on their way home after looping around the moon on a historic flyby. Here are the dazzling images they captured

Earth appears to rise over the moon
Earth, partially illuminated, appears over the moon’s horizon at 6:41 p.m. Eastern time on Monday—just three minutes before the Artemis 2 astronauts reached the far side of the moon, initiating a communications blackout with NASA’s teams on the ground. NASA

The four astronauts on the Artemis 2 mission have traveled farther from Earth than anyone has gone before. They’ve become the first humans to venture into the moon’s vicinity—including its mysterious far side—in more than five decades. And now, they have breathtaking photography to show for it.

A stunning new gallery of images reveals the splendor of the lunar flyby. At 6:44 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, the crew’s Orion spacecraft crossed to the far side of the moon, initiating a planned, 40-minute communications blackout with NASA teams on the ground, as the moon itself blocks radio signals.

This silence is “exciting in a slightly scary way,” Derek Buzasi, an astronomer at the University of Chicago, tells the Agence France-Presse. The same thing happened during the Apollo missions, he adds. “We all held our breaths a little bit.”

“We will see you on the other side,” Victor Glover, the Artemis 2 pilot, said as the spacecraft disappeared behind the moon. “We’re still going to feel your love from Earth.”

During the flyby, one of the crew’s main tasks was to take photographs. Because of the way the moon revolves on its own axis as it orbits Earth, we always observe the same part of the it from the ground. So the Artemis 2 astronauts beheld sights never before seen by human eyes.

Did you know? The “dark side” myth

Though popularized by a 1973 Pink Floyd album, there is no true “dark side” of the moon. We only see one side of the moon from Earth, but the other side gets bathed in sunlight throughout the course of the lunar cycle—it doesn’t experience permanent night. That’s why scientists prefer the term “far side.”

Earlier on Monday, the four Artemis astronauts set a record for the farthest anyone has ever been from Earth, surpassing the 248,655-mile distance that the Apollo 13 crew reached in 1970. By the end of the day, they had passed their farthest point from Earth, putting the new record at 252,756 miles.

The team proposed names for two craters on the lunar surface. One, northwest of the nearly 600-mile-wide crater known as the Orientale Basin, should be called Integrity, they suggested, which is the name of the crew’s Orion spacecraft for this mission. For the other, they proposed Carroll, after commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who died in 2020. After Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen put in the name request, the crew embraced one another in tears. The International Astronomical Union, which oversees the names of objects in space, will process the suggestions after the mission.

Once the astronauts emerged from the moon’s far side and re-established communication with Earth, they witnessed another incredible display: a solar eclipse. For about an hour, they saw the moon block out the sun. They spotted fleeting flashes across the moon’s surface as micrometeoroids crashed into the lunar ground. A bluish glow of reflected light from our planet, called earthshine, lit the moon, and ethereal wisps of the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, appeared from behind the natural satellite toward the end of the eclipse.

“No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us,” Wiseman said. “It is absolutely spectacular, surreal.”

“Humans probably have not evolved to see what we’re seeing,” Glover said. “It is truly hard to describe. It is amazing.”

Here are some of the newest images sent back from space.

a close-up view of the moon's cratered surface, with half of the image in darkness
Sunlight casts shadows across the moon’s craters, ridges and basins at the border of night and day on the natural satellite. NASA
the moon, seen as a shadow, eclipses the sun, which offers a faint glow behind it
The moon blocks out the sun and causes a solar eclipse from the perspective of the Orion capsule. During the eclipse, astronauts saw flashes of light on the moon, from micrometeoroid impacts on its surface. NASA
the moon, a large dark circle, comes out from the right side of the frame. It's slightly lit from behind and bright pinpoints of light appear in the distance, including one especially bright dot
During the solar eclipse, Venus appeared brightly (left) as the sun’s light got blotted out. Some surface features are faintly visible on the moon because of earthshine, or the reflected glow from Earth. NASA
four people wearing eclipse glasses
The Artemis 2 crew had to wear eclipse glasses to protect their eyes during certain stages of the solar eclipse they witnessed from their spacecraft. NASA
view from below as a man puts a camera through a hole in a blue curtain
Astronaut Jeremy Hansen pokes a lens through a camera shroud—a curtain with space for a camera—to photograph the moon without interference from light in the cabin area. NASA
the moon in the foreground and a crescent Earth in the background
Captured about six minutes before Earth appeared to set behind the moon, this view shows our planet illuminated as a crescent. The bright regions include Australia and Oceania. NASA
the moon looms large, and a small Earth appears just over its upper left
At 6:41 p.m. Eastern time on April 6, the Earth appears to set behind the moon. NASA
a burst of light appears from behind a dark curved moon
The eclipsed sun begins to emerge from behind the moon. Its light revealed lunar topography that’s not typically visible along the edge of the moon seen here. NASA

Carlyn Kranking is Smithsonian magazine's associate web editor for science.

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