The Artemis II astronauts have captured our blue planet’s brilliant beauty as they zoom ever closer to the moon.
NASA released the crew’s first downlinked images Friday, one and a half days into the first astronaut moonshot in more than half a century.
The first photo taken by Commander Reid Wiseman shows a curved slice of Earth in one of the capsule’s windows. The second shows the entire globe with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds. A green aurora even glows, according to NASA.
As of this morning, Wiseman and his crew were 160,000 kilometres from Earth and were quickly gaining on the moon with another 258,000 kilometres to go. They should reach their destination on Tuesday.
The three Americans and one Canadian will swing around the moon in their Orion capsule, hang a U-turn and then head straight back home without stopping. They fired Orion’s main engine Thursday night, which set them on their course.
After Mission Control shifted the position of their capsule, the entire Earth, complete with northern lights, filled their windows.
“It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks,” Wiseman said in a TV interview.
They’re the first lunar travellers since Apollo 17 in 1972.
