Artemis 2 Crew Shares 12,000 Stunning Photos of Earth

Four astronauts just gave us a reminder of how beautiful our home planet really is.

NASA released 12,000 photos this month from the Artemis 2 mission, which sent four crew members around the moon in April. The images show Earth in ways most of us will never see it: glowing with city lights, wrapped in shimmering auroras, and rising like a delicate crescent over the moon's ancient surface.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen launched on April 1 and spent 10 days circling the moon. They became the first humans to leave low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission landed on the moon in 1972.

A new timelapse video compiled from their photos shows Earth slowly sweeping into view before disappearing into darkness. Tiny dots of satellites shine just above our planet's rim. Auroras dance at the edges where our atmosphere meets space.

The crew's most stunning shot came on April 6 during their flyby of the moon's far side. They captured what they called an "Earthset" at 6:41 p.m. EDT, showing only a thin crescent of our world glowing against the darkness. White clouds swirled over Australia and the Pacific Ocean while the 40-mile-wide Ohm Crater stretched across the lunar horizon below.

Why This Inspires

The Artemis 2 astronauts spent much of their mission photographing Earth, not just the moon. Their choice reminds us that sometimes we need distance to appreciate what we have. Seeing our entire world as a fragile blue marble floating in space has inspired environmental movements and peaceful cooperation since the Apollo era.

These photos matter for another reason too. They show that humanity is reaching beyond Earth again after five decades. The Artemis program plans to land astronauts on the moon's surface as soon as 2028, with Artemis 3 testing critical docking operations in low Earth orbit by 2027.

For now, we have 12,000 beautiful reasons to look up and feel hopeful about what humans can accomplish when we work together.