CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The four astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis 2 mission have traveled more than halfway to the Moon, positioning them closer to Earth’s satellite than to their home planet.
The NASA announced late Friday that the Orion spacecraft, carrying the crew, had covered over half the distance to the Moon. At that point, the astronauts were approximately 320,000 kilometers from Earth and 132,000 kilometers from the Moon. The agency released the first photos taken by the crew from space, showing Earth partially shrouded in darkness.
Commander Reid Wiseman captured one striking image through an Orion window shortly after a key maneuver placed the spacecraft on its lunar trajectory. The panorama revealed parts of the Iberian Peninsula, much of North Africa, swirling clouds, and greenish polar lights along the planet’s edges.
Artemis 2 launched April 1, 2026, from Kennedy Space Center atop the Space Launch System rocket. The crew — Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of Canada — departed Earth’s orbit about 24 hours later with a nearly six-minute main engine burn, the first such lunar-bound maneuver by humans since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The 10-day test flight will loop the Moon without landing, covering more than 2.3 million kilometers to validate Orion systems and deep-space operations ahead of future landings. The next milestone comes early Monday when Orion enters the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence.