CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Artemis II astronauts have captured our blue planet’s brilliant beauty as they zoom ever closer to the moon.
NASA released the crew’s first downlinked images Friday, 1 1/2 days into the first astronaut moonshot in more than half a century.
The first photo taken by commander Reid Wiseman shows a curved slice of Earth in one of the capsule’s windows. The second shows the entire globe with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds.
As of midmorning Friday, Wiseman and his crew were 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometers) from Earth and were quickly gaining on the moon with another 168,000 miles (270,000 kilometers) to go. They should reach their destination on Monday.
The three Americans and one Canadian will swing around the moon in their Orion capsule, hang a U-turn and then head straight back home without stopping. They fired Orion's main engine Thursday night that set them on their course.
They're the first lunar travelers since Apollo 17 in 1972.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
latest_posts
- 1
Staggering Spots to Stargaze All over the Planet - 2Find the Standards of Viable Refereeing: Settling Debates with Strategy
- 3The next frontier in space is closer than you think – welcome to the world of very low Earth orbit satellites
- 4Surprise! Saturn's huge moon Titan may not have a buried ocean after all
- 5One spent $20 on candy. Another paid $700 for a custom costume. Here's how Halloween costs stacked up this year.
- Polar bears are rewiring their own genetics to survive a warming climate
- German foreign minister backs abandoning EU's unanimity principle
- Eight wounded, cars catch fire in central Israel following strike from Iranian cluster munition
- Instructions to Expand Your Smash 1500's Presentation: Tips and Deceives
- The Main 15 Applications for Efficiency and Association
- Tech giants accused of not complying with Australian social media ban
- Modern surgery began with saws and iron hands – how amputation transformed the body in the Renaissance
- Moderna to complete US mRNA manufacturing network with $140 million investment
- 'You're no longer my sister' - rows erupt as war divides Iranian families
