ONE BIGGER LEAP

NASA Drops Never-Before-Seen Images From Historic Lunar Flyby

Astronauts left the historic return to the moon with a new record and photos to prove it.

NASA’s Artemis II astronauts are heading back to Earth—with thousands of striking new images from a history-making trip around the moon. The crew aboard the Orion spacecraft came within roughly 4,067 miles of the lunar surface during a seven-hour flyby, capturing about 10,000 photos along the way, according to NASA. Working in shifts, the astronauts documented the “Earthset”—the inverse of a sunrise—while also witnessing a solar eclipse as the moon briefly blocked out the sun, leaving its outer atmosphere glowing. The team used the record-breaking pass to identify and name features across the moon’s cratered surface, part of a broader effort to map terrain ahead of future missions. Some of those names carried personal weight: one crater was named after the Orion spacecraft, while another honored Commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, who died in 2020 after battling cancer. The images are expected to help scientists deepen their understanding of the moon as NASA works toward its long-term goal of returning humans to its surface.