Jaw-dropping pictures taken of Earth by Artemis II crew en route to Moon as astronauts pass halfway mark
THE Artemis II crew have released jaw-dropping pictures of the Earth as they zoom past the halfway mark towards the moon.
Breathtaking photographs, released 36 hours into the mission, show the blue planet approximately 100,000 miles away through the spacecraft’s window.
The four astronauts on board – NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen – have now covered more than half the distance en route to their lunar flyby.
“You are now closer to the moon than you are to us on Earth,” mission control told the astronauts.
“We all kind of had a collective expression of joy at that… we can see the Moon out of the docking hatch right now, it is a beautiful sight,” replied Koch.
The milestone was hit two days and five hours into their marathon ten-day trip, and the Orion spacecraft is now more than 219,000 miles from Earth.
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“We’re halfway there,” NASA shared on social media.
The crew are now hurtling towards their next landmark, when they will enter the lunar atmosphere on day five of the mission.
A jaw-dropping full view shot taken from the Orion capsule shared yesterday shows the divide between night and day, known as the terminator, cutting across Earth.
Another striking image reveals a spectacular green aurora lighting up the atmosphere, while faint zodiacal light is also visible.
Commander Wiseman snapped the pictures after the aircraft thundered out of Earth’s orbit to start its three-day journey to the moon.
“It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks”, Wiseman said, describing the view.
Mission Control adjusted the spacecraft’s position so the entire Earth filled their windows.
After launching from the NASA Kennedy Space Centre on April 1, the 32-story rocket – the mightiest ever built – stuck close to home for the first 25 hours of its 10-day test flight.
NASA said the capsule, named Orion, will perform multiple maneuvers to then place the crew on a lunar free-return trajectory.
This means the Earth’s gravity will naturally pull it back home after flying around the Moon.
This is also when the astronauts will remove their spacesuits and don plain clothes for the rest of the mission, aside from when they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and are recovered from the ocean.
Watch The Sun’s livestream of the Artemis II mission here
The crew won’t pause for a stopover or orbit the Moon like Apollo 8’s first lunar visitors did so famously on Christmas Eve 1968.
But the four astronauts stand to become the most distant humans ever when their capsule zooms past the Moon.
They will then continue another 4,000 miles beyond, before making a U-turn and tearing straight home to a splashdown in the Pacific.
But the high-stakes mission has not been without tense moments.
Engineers ran into issues on launch day, facing two technical scares and a one-hour delay before liftoff.
A faulty loo also meant crew could not boldly go for six hours after a blinking light alert put the £17.4million toilet out of action.
Canadian Hansen, 50, revealed the “tense” moment in the crew’s first live interview from space.
He said: “We did get a warning message for ‘cabin leak suspected’”.
Cabin leaks can be deadly – they could lead to the structure of the spacecraft being compromised, risking exposing the crew to space’s powerful vacuum.
Fortunately, the crew investigated and found the alert was a mistake, and onboard cabin pressure remained at normal levels.
During a post-launch press conference, the space agency said the crew were “safe, they’re secure and in great spirits”.
The last time Nasa sent a crew into space was the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
The US is now targeting a return to the lunar surface by 2028, before China does in 2030.
“We have a beautiful moonrise, we’re headed right at it,” said Commander Reid Wiseman.
