The most stunning pictures from Artemis II’s flyby of the moon

On April 6, astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission completed a loop around the far side of the Moon. They have traveled more than 406,700 kilometers from Earth, further than any human has before.

The four crew members – Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen – took turns at the Orion capsule’s windows overlooking the Earth and Moon (above). The reflection of sunlight on the Earth’s surface, called earth shine, was so bright that they covered one of the windows with a spare shirt.

Passing behind the Moon, astronauts were treated to views of areas never before seen by the human eye, such as the entirety of a crater called Orientale Basin (below). The dark spot in the center of the crater is dried lava from an eruption billions of years ago. Astronauts proposed new names for two smaller craters near Orientale: Integrity, named after their spacecraft, and Carroll, named after Wiseman’s late wife.

During the mission, the phases of the Earth and Moon changed rapidly from the spacecraft’s perspective. “The Moon is a gibbous and the Earth is a crescent,” Hansen said at one point. As Orion began to rotate toward the far side of the Moon, crescent Earth came to rest behind the Moon (below).

Glover expressed a particular fascination with the moon’s terminator, the boundary between day and night. At this line, sunlight hits the ground at an acute angle that casts long shadows, accentuating the terrain and revealing details that would not be visible in full illumination (below). “There is so much magic in the terminator – the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes. [where] you would fall straight into the center of the moon if you entered some of them. It’s so visually captivating,” he said.

While on the other side, the astronauts could not communicate with mission control on Earth, but they continued to take photos and dictate notes into voice recorders. At one point, they witnessed a unique solar eclipse that lasted almost an hour (below). The sun was completely hidden behind the moon, while the side of the moon facing Earth remained illuminated by terrestrial light.

Their flyby now successful, the astronauts are on their way to Earth. They are expected to arrive on April 10, when Orion will crash land off the coast of California.