After a nearly flawless launch—and a brief lavatory issue—the four astronauts aboard Artemis II are cruising on the first crewed lunar flyby in over 50 years. As of April 3rd, the team is less than 170,000 miles from its pass around the moon. There is still a lot of work to do before the 10-day mission is complete, but that doesn’t mean the Orion spacecraft’s inhabitants can’t pause to take in the sights.
Not long after leaving his home planet’s gravitational pull, Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman photographed a side of Earth not seen by human eyes in decades.
According to NASA, Wiseman snapped the picture after the crew completed their translunar injection burn—the final engine boost to set the astronauts on their rendezvous course. Two auroras at the top right and bottom left along with zodiacal light in the bottom right are visible and glowing brightly as Earth passes in front of the sun.
Aside from passing the time with amateur photography, the Artemis II crew has already taken questions from reporters during their first downlink livestream and taken turns on the spacecraft’s flywheel exercise device. Designed specifically for microgravity environments, the suitcase-sized machine supports aerobic work such as rowing, as well as resistive training with loads maxing out at 400 pounds.
Astronauts can keep admiring Earth from afar until Monday April 6th, when the team will need to switch over to the lunar observation phase of their mission. The crew will document the moon’s surface conditions for roughly six hours, taking particular note of its ancient lava flows, impact craters, and other details.
At a peak distance of about 4,800 miles from the moon, the flyby will mark the farthest any human has ever traveled from Earth. It will also include a nearly one-hour-long solar eclipse on the moon’s dark side, allowing astronauts to assess any meteoroid strikes and slowly rising lunar dust. From there, it’s a multiday return trajectory with a splashdown expected on April 10th. Until then, more astounding, never-before-seen scenes from space are sure to come.
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