Captured by the Artemis II crew during their lunar flyby on April 6, 2026, this image shows the Moon fully eclipsing the Sun. From the crew’s perspective, the Moon appears large enough to completely block the Sun, creating nearly 54 minutes of totality and extending the view far beyond what is possible from Earth. The corona forms a glowing halo around the dark lunar disk, revealing details of the Sun’s outer atmosphere typically hidden by its brightness. Also visible are stars, typically too faint to see when imaging the Moon, but with the Moon in darkness stars are readily imaged. This unique vantage point provides both a striking visual and a valuable opportunity for astronauts to document and describe the corona during humanity’s return to deep space. The faint glow of the nearside of the Moon is visible in this image, having been illuminated by light reflected off the Earth. (Photo: NASA via Getty Images) By Joey Roulette
The Artemis II crew, flying in their Orion capsule since launching from Florida last week, reached the moon earlier this week while cruising along a path that took them past the shadowed, lunar far side and then on to become the farthest-flying humans in history.
"Orion systems are operating nominally, remain healthy, and we are just trekking our way home from the moon," Orion deputy program manager Debbie Korth told reporters on Wednesday.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are the first wave of astronauts in a multibillion-dollar series of missions under the Artemis program that aims to return humans to the moon's surface by 2028 before China, and establish a long-term U.S. presence over the next decade, building a moon base for potential future missions to Mars.
Back on Earth, dozens of lunar scientists have been packed in rooms adjacent to NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston this week, scribbling down notes and debating a steady stream of both real-time and recorded audio from the Artemis II astronaut crew in their Orion spacecraft.
The crew is due to return to Earth on Friday around 8 p.m. ET (0000 GMT Saturday), splashing down off the coast of San Diego, California to cap their nearly 10-day mission. They will reach peak speeds of up to 23,839 mph (38,365 kph) as they plunge into Earth's atmosphere.
The four astronauts on Monday had reached a record-breaking distance from Earth of roughly 252,000 miles, surpassing by some 4,000 miles the previous record held by the Apollo 13 crew for 56 years.
The astronauts broke that record amid a six-hour lunar flyby in which they surveyed the lunar surface from roughly 4,000 miles above.
Advances in lunar science have typically relied on lunar-orbiting satellites and Earth-based observations. But the crew's six-hour lunar flyby provided a real-time stream of scientific collections from human eyes, allowing rare back-and-forth discussions between teams on the ground and their fellow scientists over 252,000 miles away in deep space.
Scientists see NASA's Artemis II mission as an important early step in unlocking mysteries about the solar system's formation. The moon, Artemis II mission specialist Koch said before launching to space last week, is a "witness plate" to the formation of our solar system.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chris Sanders, Bill Berkrot and Stephen Coates)