For the first time, humans have glimpsed the entire far side of the moon with their own eyes.
Now breathtaking photos, taken by the four Artemis II mission astronauts who flew to the dark side of the moon on Monday, are now being shared with the world.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen snapped photos and made detailed observations from the window of their Orion spacecraft in the most anticipated moment of the mission.
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They captured the moon’s rugged terrain, sprawling impact craters, and vast, dark plains.
The first photo released from the flyby, shared on Tuesday morning by the White House on X, shows an “Earthset” — a moment captured from the lunar far side as Earth dipped out of view on the opposite edge of the moon.
The new image is a kind of re-creation of the iconic “Earthrise” photo taken during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968.
This image of ‘a setting Earth’ was captured three minutes before the Artemis II astronauts briefly lost contact with Earth on the dark side of the moon. Credit: NASA The iconic Apollo 8 ‘Earthrise’ photo taken December 24, 1968. Credit: NASA The Apollo 8 photo, however, showed Earth re-emerging into view, rather than disappearing, as astronauts Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell circumnavigated the moon.
The White House also shared a spectacular photo the Artemis II astronauts snapped of a solar eclipse from space.
The eclipse occurred on Monday evening, toward the end of the hours-long lunar flyby, when the sun slipped behind the moon.
The astronauts became the first people to view a solar eclipse from the moon.
The new image shows a darkened moon with the sun’s outermost atmosphere, the corona, glowing around the edges.
The moon eclipses the sun in a view captured by the Artemis II crew on Monday. Credit: NASA Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen spent about seven hours taking photographs and gathering notes about surface features on the moon during the flyby.
They became the first people to see the entire lunar far side, which is not visible from Earth because that part of the moon permanently faces away from our planet.
Even during the Apollo missions, astronauts couldn’t view much of the moon’s far side because of the paths and timing of their flights.
The Artemis II crew: mission specialist Christina Koch, pilot Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. Credit: NASA Astronaut Jeremy Hansen captures an image through the camera shroud covering the spacecraft window to prevent cabin light reflections. Credit: NASA The Artemis II crew’s early observations elicited celebrations from the mission’s lunar science team throughout the flyby.
Glover, for instance, was particularly captivated by the jagged topography along the moon’s terminator, the dividing line between its illuminated side and the side cloaked in darkness.
“Boy, I am loving the terminator,” he radioed to Mission Control.
“There’s just so much magic in the terminator — the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes.
“You’d fall straight to the centre of the moon if you stepped in some of those. It’s just so visually captivating.”
A portion of the Moon comes into view along the terminator — the boundary between lunar day and night. Credit: NASA The four crew members spent hours marveling over the moon’s brightness, colours and surface features, and even reported seeing brown and green hues on the near side of the moon.
They radioed vivid descriptions in real time to mission controllers in Houston.
The observations will be important for lunar and planetary scientists. NASA has said the Artemis II images of craters, ridges and ancient lava flows on the lunar surface could help researchers better understand how the moon — and the solar system — formed.
During the flyby, the Artemis II astronauts set a record for venturing farther from Earth than any other humans.
As they swung around the moon, they flew 406,771km from our home planet, more than 6,598km farther than the Apollo 13 astronauts did in 1970 on their emergency return home.
The rugged terrain of the moon was silhouetted against the ‘Earth rise’. Credit: NASA NASA plans to publicly release the full set of moon photos taken by the Artemis II astronauts but, because of downlink limitations, the bulk will not be retrieved and processed until after the astronauts return to Earth.
Wiseman, Koch, Glover and Hansen are now on their journey home.
They are scheduled to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on Friday.