A new timelapse shows the stunning views of Earth that four astronauts got during their historic moon journey last month.
Next up is a closer-up view of the planet with little dots — satellites — shining and moving just above the rim of Earth. Then a few auroras, more popularly known as the northern lights and southern lights, become visible at the edge of our planet. Finally, Earth recedes again from the camera.
Artemis 2 launched on April 1 and returned to Earth on April 10. It sent four astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist) and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — around the moon. It marked the first time astronauts had left low Earth orbit sine 1972, when Apollo 17 landed two people on the moon’s surface.
While their mission was to the moon, a great deal of the astronauts’ focus was on our home planet. One of their most famous shots was on Flight Day 6, when the crew captured an “Earthset” during their flyby of the moon’s far side. (The photo’s name was a nod to the iconic “Earthrise” shot that Apollo 8‘s Bill Anders captured during his own crew’s Christmas 1968 lunar visit.)
Artemis 2’s Earthset, which was captured at 6:41 p.m. EDT (2241 GMT) on April 6, showed only a thin crescent of our home planet as the rest of the visible Earth was in shadow. White clouds shine over Australia and the nearby ocean in the show. Meanwhile, the lunar surface looms below, including the 40-mile-wide (64-kilometer-wide) Ohm Crater near the moon’s horizon.
Artemis 2 is part of the Artemis program of missions, which aim to send astronauts back to the moon’s surface as soon as two years from now. Next up under NASA’s recently revised schedule is Artemis 3, which will visit low Earth orbit in 2027 to test docking operations with Orion and one or both of Artemis’ privately developed Human Landing System craft.
The next mission, Artemis 4, could touch down on the moon in 2028 if the lander, the still-in-development spacesuits and other moon-mission essentials are ready in time.