Our Favorite Artemis II Photos

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left side shows Earth rising above the Moon's cratered surface; right side shows a full view of Earth from space, with clouds, oceans, and continents visible against the black background.

NASA’s Artemis II mission ushered in a new era of space exploration and inspired billions at a time when hope is so sorely needed. The successful mission, more than 50 years after people last orbited the Moon, honored Apollo’s rich legacy while charting an all-new path for the future. The four astronauts aboard Artemis II’s Orion spacecraft captured many exceptional photos on their journey, and these are our favorites.

Jaron Schneider

I like perspective. As much as I enjoy the wide, sweeping shots of our Moon and Earth set against each other (and I do very, very much enjoy those), my favorite photos remind me that there were people there.

A crescent-shaped Earth is visible in the dark sky above the Moon’s surface, as seen through a spacecraft window with parts of the window frame in the foreground.

These photos have context. We have seen stunningly beautiful photos of space before, and even some photos of the side of the Moon that faces away from our view down here on Earth. What we haven’t seen is human finger press a “normal” camera’s shutter in order to get that view. To me, Artemis II is soul-fulfilling because of that human element.

A crescent moon appears on the right side of a dark sky, with bright light rays streaming in from the left, creating a dramatic contrast between light and shadow.

A close-up view of the moon’s cratered surface framed by a dark, blurry foreground, possibly taken through a spacecraft window against the blackness of space.

I connect with these photos because I can feel the invisible lines that tie us as photographers together. I know what it would feel like to have my camera pressed to the viewport. I have felt the waves of emotion as a gorgeous scene unfolds in front of me. I have felt the pressure to not only capture that scene, but do my best to do it justice despite the fact a single frame could never encompass how it felt to be there.

I can feel the compulsion to change my view, to pull back, to show the edge of that window.

An astronaut wearing a headset operates controls and looks at a screen inside a dimly lit, equipment-filled spacecraft. Cables and electronic panels surround the person, illuminated by red and white lights.

A silhouette of a person in low light, facing a small window with reflections, partially illuminated by light coming from outside the window. The surroundings are mostly dark.

These photos remind me of the importance of the human touch. Right now, surrounded by soulless corporations and artificial intelligence, I really need that.

I need to be reminded that together, people can achieve great things.

Matt Growcoot

One of the things that kind of flew under the radar is the fact that NASA accurately predicted what kind of photos they were going to take. I wrote an article about the crew’s photo training, and it included a simulation of the photos they were expected to get. The comparison is fascinating.

The crescent Earth rises above the curved, cratered surface of the Moon against a black space background.

A view of the Moon’s cratered surface dominates the foreground, with the distant Earth partially visible, rising over the Moon’s horizon against the darkness of space.

And while all the incredible space photos they captured were truly amazing and inspiring, for me, seeing mission specialist Christina Koch giving the Orion module a great big hug after safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean warms the cockles. I’ve been following the Artemis mission pretty closely, and I knew that re-entry into the atmosphere was the most perilous part of the journey (on Artemis I, the protective heat shield disintegrated). I went to bed on the evening of April 10 a little nervous about the headlines I was going to wake up to in the morning. Seeing them crew back safe and sound was the icing on the cake.

A person in a blue jumpsuit hugs a large, black, cone-shaped spacecraft capsule with red flotation devices attached, inside a brightly lit industrial facility.

Jeremy Gray

Anyone who knows me even just a little bit, even if only by my bylines, knows that I love space. It’s bordering on obsession. I can spend hours poring over deep space photos captured by the most sophisticated telescopes ever crafted, both on Earth and in space itself. I’ve been fortunate to spend much of my life living in places with dark, clear skies and have spent many nights out in the field, camera fixed to my tripod, soaking in the cosmos. The ever-expanding infinity of space, where all things are, were, and will ever be, has an unbreakable hold over me. For the same reasons some people fear the cosmos, its incomprehensible vastness chief among them, I love it.

But as much as I embrace deep, distant, far reaches of space and love thinking about them and staring through the abyss, there is something so remarkably special about the intersection of humanity and space. Nothing yet has ever encapsulated that rare, beautiful intersection like NASA’s lunar missions, starting first with Apollo and now with Artemis. The Artemis II crew of Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen traveled farther from Earth than anyone ever has, nearly 253,000 miles away.

They didn’t just break records, and in the case of Koch and Glover, shatter ceilings that should have never existed in the first place, they rebuilt humanity’s bond with the cosmos and space exploration that had been severed for over 50 years since Apollo 17. It was as inspirational as the crew’s photos are beautiful.

A dark planet or moon is centered against a star-filled space background, with a bright, glowing halo of light outlining its edge, creating a dramatic silhouette effect.

My colleagues picked fantastic photos above for great reasons, but for me, one of the very first shots NASA shared from the Artemis II mission itself proved the most moving. Commander Reid Wiseman’s photo of Earth as the crew hurtled away from it and everyone they care about is a powerful callback to the last time humans traveled to the Moon, when Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt captured the iconic “The Blue Marble” photo of Earth, arguably among the most famous and most viewed photos in history. Wiseman’s new shot built a 54-year throughline between that moment in 1972 and Artemis II’s achievement this month.

A view of planet Earth from space, showing continents, oceans, and cloud formations with a dark background of space and a bright spot of light near the lower right edge.

While perhaps not as visually spectacular as some of the Artemis II crew’s other photos, “Hello World” is a reminder that we all share a single planet and that no one of us is bigger than the rest. With the exceedingly rare exception of astronauts, every person who has ever lived (and probably will ever live) spent every second of their life squarely planted on this floating ball of rock and water, just like everyone they ever loved, hated, and never knew at all. There is no stronger thread that ties us all together than our shared home, and there it is, right there, somehow spectacular and entirely unremarkable all at once.

Image credits: NASA. The Artemis II crew comprises Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. Although it is impossible to credit everyone who made Artemis II possible, it is important to recognize that hundreds, if not thousands, of people worked tirelessly behind the scenes to safely put the Artemis II astronauts into space, and more importantly, bring them home.

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