NASA has released a series of new images of Earth captured by the crew of the Artemis II mission from inside the Orion spacecraft. The photos were taken during the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022, which tested Orion's systems in deep space, and are being highlighted as the agency prepares for the upcoming crewed Artemis II flight.
The Artemis II mission, currently scheduled for no earlier than September 2025, will carry four astronauts—NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen—on a flyby around the Moon. The newly shared images offer a preview of the views the crew will experience from Orion's windows.
These visuals are intended to build public engagement and illustrate the spacecraft's capabilities as NASA works toward returning humans to the lunar surface. The images show Earth as a distant, luminous sphere against the blackness of space, similar to the iconic "Earthrise" photos from the Apollo era.
The successful Artemis I mission, which concluded in December 2022, validated Orion's heat shield and flight systems. Artemis II will be the first crewed test of the spacecraft, paving the way for the Artemis III mission aimed at landing astronauts near the lunar south pole.
