NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman placed his tablet camera through the Orion spacecraft’s window and captured a photo of Earth as the crew finished the engine burn that sent them on their way to the moon. On April 3, the photo became one of the first images downlinked from the mission.
The Earth is directly in the middle of the image, blocking the sun’s light so clearly that the small layer of atmosphere around the perimeter glows like a blue ring. There are also light curtains, one in the upper right corner and another swooping in from the bottom left. Both are sparkling with the soft greens and faint reds that occur when particles from the sun collide with the high atmosphere. Then, down at the bottom right, you can see a broad band of light caused by sunlight reflecting off tiny grains of dust drifting between the planets.
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Wiseman took this photo of our home planet on April 2, less than a day and a half after the four-person crew left Kennedy Space Center. The Orion had just completed its final engine burn, known as translunar injection, and was now out of Earth’s gravity. As they left the atmosphere, they could see the entire hemisphere of the globe spread out before them, with Africa and Europe standing out clearly, and the northern lights dancing around the top.
The tablet Wiseman used for the photo was one of those everyday devices they all carry for taking notes and keeping track of things; there was no special telescope or fancy equipment involved, just him waiting for the sun, spacecraft, and Earth to line up and then clicking, and by the way, the windows themselves were a little smudged from constant use, but that just added to the realism of the scene.
Most of us down here don’t see auroras. To us, they simply seem as large swaths of light stretching over the boundaries of magnetic fields. The zodiacal light, a favorite of astronomers back home, which is hidden among the city lights, is actually a sharp slice of dust catching the sun’s light and transmitting it to us across millions of miles. All of this adds up to what appears to be a very conventional space snap, but it has amazing depth and life.
Artemis II marks the first time humans have been sent thus far out in decades (since the Apollo days, no less). The astronauts will swing around the moon for almost 4,800 miles before returning home to splash down on April 10. Every photo they bring back now carries extra weight since it is more than just a view from space; it is the beginning of something long-awaited, such as the eventual plan to return humans to the lunar surface.
