A day after the Artemis 2 mission’s lunar flyby, NASA has released a stunning set of high-resolution images documenting Earthset and Earthrise, a solar eclipse that set the moon aglow, and other views of the lunar far side and the astronauts who took the pictures.
The photos were taken during a seven-hour lunar observation period at the farthest point of the Orion space capsule’s 10-day odyssey. The mission marked the first crewed trip around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, and the farthest-ever voyage by space travelers (252,756 miles from Earth, and more than 4,000 miles beyond the moon).
The Earthset photo was captured just as our home planet was sinking beneath the lunar horizon, followed about 40 minutes later by a picture of Earth rising on the other side of the moon. The pictures rekindled the spirit of NASA’s original Earthrise photo, taken by astronaut Bill Anders during Apollo 8’s round-the-moon mission in 1968.
