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NASA VIA THE NEW YORK TIMES
NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman took this picture of Earth from the Orion spacecraft’s window on Thursday, after completing the translunar injection burn. NASA has unveiled the first photos of Earth from the spacecraft, the first mission since 1972 to send people around the moon. The land masses visible at left are North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula; at right, the east coast of South America is visible but obscured by clouds.
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KENNY HOLSTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Artemis II’s solid rocket boosters are providing the 7.2 million pounds of thrust during launch at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Wednesday. The crew of Artemis II, three Americans and a Canadian, is the first group of humans to travel to the moon in more than 50 years. They will not land on the surface, but the mission will pave the way for future visits.
HOUSTON >> As the Artemis II astronauts fly farther from Earth, they’re taking the opportunity to look back home.
NASA this morning shared a partial view of our bright blue planet as captured by Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander. Earth, swathed in swirling clouds, is shown rising through a window on the Orion capsule in which the crew is to journey around the moon.
Another picture posted by the space agency shows Earth in full, with green streaks of aurora painting parts of its atmosphere.
“You look amazing, you look beautiful,” Victor Glover, the pilot of Artemis II, said in a video call with ABC News on Thursday night.
Glover, the first Black astronaut to travel to deep space, emphasized the unifying power of seeing Earth from such a distance. “No matter where you are from or what you look like, we’re all one people,” he said.
The Artemis II crew also includes mission specialists Christina Koch, the first woman to journey around the moon, and Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian astronaut to make the trip.
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NASA added two more pictures of Earth taken by the crew this afternoon. One showed our planet cut in half, with one side lit up by the sun and the other obscured by the black of night. In a second image, our world is bathed in darkness, with a tiny crescent of light illuminating its lower limb.
On Thursday, after testing out various systems of the Orion spacecraft in Earth orbit, NASA committed the capsule and crew to the trip around the moon with the spacecraft’s final major engine burn.
“With this burn to the moon, we do not leave Earth,” Koch said shortly before the maneuver. “We choose it.”
It is now the third day of the crew’s 10-day mission. The day’s activities include an in-space CPR demonstration and a test of emergency communication systems.
On Day 6, the astronauts will loop around the far side of the moon, the first humans to visit — from afar — in more than half a century. The crew today is to rehearse some of the scientific observations that they will try during that phase of the mission.
Then gravity will swing them back toward home. On the final day of the mission, the astronauts are expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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