NASA publishes photo of “Earth setting” before the return of Artemis II: “We will return”

After a lunar flyby full of memorable moments, the four Artemis II astronauts—Americans Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen—began their journey back to Earth.

“We will return,” declared American Christina Koch, the first woman in history to fly over the Moon, before adding: “We will be an inspiration, but we will always choose Earth.”

Sitting by the windows for almost seven hours, the astronauts enjoyed a unique perspective of the Moon, at a higher altitude (6,500 km) than their Apollo predecessors had from about 100 km away.

Enjoying the view

In a series of stunning photographs released by NASA on Tuesday, the blue of the Earth stands out against the vastness of space, with the Moon’s desolate horizon in the foreground, in shades ranging from gray to brown.

Among the images in the series, a photograph of the blue planet hiding behind the Moon evokes the legendary image taken on December 24, 1968 by American astronaut Bill Anders, of Apollo 8, during the first manned flyby of the Moon.

“This is a historic day, and I know how busy you will be, but don’t forget to enjoy the view,” Jim Lovell, a member of Apollo 8 who died in August 2025, said in a recording transmitted to the crew.

The iconic 1968 photograph frequently appears in historical image selections and was included in Life magazine’s 2003 book “One Hundred Photographs That Changed the World.”

The four crew members have already made history by becoming the humans who have traveled the furthest into space. Their new record, 406,771 km from Earth, surpasses that of the Apollo 13 crew in 1970 by just 6,000 km, was celebrated by NASA and Donald Trump as proof of the resurgence of the American human space flight program.

This mission has “filled the entire United States with pride,” the US president declared Monday night, congratulating the astronauts by phone.

The astronauts will return on Friday off the coast of California, where their Orion capsule is scheduled to land.

“Science fiction”

After spending 40 minutes in lunar orbit, the crew marveled at the lunar landscapes and offered countless descriptions of the terrain, including the brown and greenish shadows of the craters and the surface of the Earth’s satellite.

“We saw a beautiful double crater. It looks like a snowman,” described pilot Victor Glover, the first black astronaut to participate in a lunar mission. “It’s really hard to describe. It’s incredible.”

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The four witnessed a sunrise and sunset, as well as an eclipse in which the Moon blocked the Sun, a spectacle worthy of science fiction, exclaimed Victor Glover.

They also observed regions of the far side of the Moon that “had never appeared illuminated during the Apollo missions,” Canadian astronaut Jenni Gibbons, who was in charge of all communications with the crew from NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, told AFP on Monday.

The crew made a special request: to name two lunar craters, one in honor of their spacecraft, called “Integrity,” and the other in memory of Carroll Taylor Wiseman, the late wife of the Artemis commander.

If a future mission planned for next year proves successful, NASA hopes to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028.