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DA🌕📸 Artemis II Saw Earthrise From Behind The Moon
Artemis II just sent home lunar flyby photos that show Earth rising above the Moon's far side from a crewed spacecraft for the first time in more than 50 years. The images came during the crew's seven-hour swing around the far side on April 6, 2026, when Orion slipped behind the Moon and lost contact with Earth for about 40 minutes.
One frame shows a thin blue crescent Earth hanging over rugged terrain near Ohm crater, while another records a total solar eclipse with a glowing halo around the dark lunar disk. NASA says the crew also photographed impact craters, ancient lava flows, surface fractures, and six meteoroid impact flashes on the shadowed surface.
That matters because these are not postcard shots alone; the colors, shadows, textures, and geometry give scientists fresh clues about how the Moon's crust formed and changed over time. The eclipse view matters too, because Orion's position let the astronauts watch nearly 54 minutes of totality and capture a perspective that is impossible from the ground.
Artemis II was a test flight, but it already turned the Moon back into a place humans can observe directly instead of only through robotic passes and distant telescopes. If this is what one flyby produced, later Artemis missions could return with even richer surface views, better field observations, and a much sharper picture of the world we are heading back to.
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