CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Artemis 2 astronauts captured the brilliant beauty of our blue planet as they drew closer to the moon.
NASA released the first downlink image of an astronaut on Friday, 1 1/2 days after the first astronaut landing on the moon in more than half a century.
The first photo taken by Commander Reed Wiseman shows a curved slice of Earth through the capsule’s window. The second shows the entire Earth, with swirling white tendrils of clouds above the oceans. Green auroras even glow, according to NASA.
As of Friday morning, Wiseman and his crew were 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometers) from Earth and rapidly approaching the moon, still 160,000 miles (258,000 kilometers) away. They should arrive at their destination on Monday.
Three Americans and one Canadian will fly around the moon in the Orion capsule, turn around, and then head straight home without stopping. On Thursday night, they fired up Orion’s main engines, putting them on course.
After mission control changed the capsule’s position, the entire planet was flooded with aurora borealis, filling their windows.
“It was the most spectacular moment and all four of us stopped in our tracks,” Wiseman said in a television interview.
They are the first lunar travelers since Apollo 17 in 1972.
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