It’s been less than a month since the Artemis 2 mission returned to Earth, and the 10-day journey to the Moon and back is truly the gift that keeps on giving.
NASA put together the ultimate photo dump, releasing more than 12,000 photos taken by the Artemis 2 astronauts during their historic trip around the Moon. Throughout the course of the mission, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen captured their journey as they ventured deeper into space than any other human has gone before.
The agency has already released dozens of those images, but the new gallery includes breathtaking views of the Moon and Earth that have never been seen before. We’ve selected a few of our favorites for your viewing pleasure.
Look at the Moon
The Artemis 2 mission launched on April 1, setting a course for the Moon with the Orion capsule (named Integrity). The crew of astronauts on board Integrity became the first to leave Earth orbit in more than half a century.
The Orion spacecraft completed a translunar injection burn on April 2, placing it on its lunar flyby trajectory.
En route to the Moon, the Artemis astronauts were still able to look back at Earth and capture the subtle beauty of our home planet against the dark backdrop of space.
Earth can also be seen peeking from behind the Moon in this group photo that captures the planet and its natural satellite.
During a lunar flyby on April 6, the Artemis astronauts witnessed a solar eclipse as the Sun dipped behind the Moon’s far side. The Sun’s outer atmosphere, called the corona, can still be seen forming a bright halo around the Moon.
The crew of astronauts reached the Moon on April 7, observing parts of the lunar surface that no human has ever laid eyes on before. Orion slingshotted around the far side of the Moon, giving the crew seven hours to marvel at its dusty, cratered surface.
Photo carousel
If one photo is worth a thousand words, then thousands capturing humanity’s deep space adventures is certainly priceless. During the mission, the crew of astronauts managed to send a few images to ground control at NASA.
Since returning from their mission on April 10, the astronauts handed over their memory cards to the agency to recover the main bulk of the data.
Mission teams at NASA are currently hard at work processing all the data collected during Artemis 2. The full dataset, as well as preliminary reports on science and operations of the mission, is due to be published in October. That includes the thousands of images captured during the mission.
For now, NASA dumped all the photographs on its Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth website. You can browse through the images here, but it may take you some time to sort through them all. While some of the images are just pitch-black views from the crew capsule, others are real show-stoppers.
I particularly like this image of a field of stars shining bright outside the Orion capsule. The astronauts likely had to set up their cameras for long exposure in order for the stars to appear in the image, which captures the raw, unedited beauty of space.
