NASA has shared the first high-resolution images of the Earth taken by the Artemis II crew as they pass the halfway point between the Earth and the Moon.
The mission’s commander, Reid Wiseman, took the “spectacular” images, Nasa says, after the crew completed a final engine burn that set them on a trajectory towards our closest celestial neighbour.
At about 07:00 BST, Nasa’s online dashboard showed the Orion spacecraft was by then 142,000 miles (228,500 km) from Earth, and 132,000 miles from the Moon.
Astronaut Christina Koch said the crew had a collective “expression of joy” upon being told of the milestone, which was hit around two days, five hours and 24 minutes after blast off.
The first image, called Hello, World, shows the vast expanse of blue that is the Atlantic Ocean, framed by a glow of the atmosphere as the Earth eclipses the Sun and green auroras at either pole.
The Earth appears upside down, with the western Sahara and Iberian peninsula visible to the left and the eastern portion of South America to the right.
Nasa identified the bright planet to the bottom right as Venus.
The images were taken after the crew successfully completed a trans-lunar injection burn in the early hours of Friday.
The burn took the Orion spacecraft out of Earth orbit as the four astronauts aboard aim to travel the more than 200,000 miles to the Moon.
Artemis II is now on a looping path that will carry the crew around the far side of the Moon and back again. It is the first time since 1972 that humans have travelled outside the Earth’s orbit.
The spacecraft blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the crew should pass around the far side of the Moon on 6 April before returning to Earth on 10 April with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
After the burn was completed, the crew were “glued to the windows” taking pictures, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen told mission control in Houston.
“We are getting a beautiful view of the dark side of the Earth, lit by the Moon,” he said.
Wiseman later called back down to mission control in Houston to ask how to clean the windows, as the astronauts’ enthusiasm to see into space had left them dirty.
