The United States just released humanity’s newest defining view of our home planet. The striking “Earthset” image comes right as the accelerating 21st-century geopolitical space race between the U.S. and China drives both nations to rapidly test the hardware needed to secure the lunar South Pole.
NASA dropped the image on Tuesday. The photo captures a crescent Earth sinking behind the moon’s pockmarked far side. It was snapped by the four-person U.S.-Canadian Artemis II crew on Monday at exactly 6:41 p.m. ET.
Breaking the 56-Year Distance Milestone
The shot conceptually mirrors William Anders’ legendary 1968 Apollo 8 “Earthrise” photo. But this modern crew went significantly further into the dark. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen established a brand new all-time human spaceflight distance record. They hit a maximum distance of 252,756 miles from Earth after breaking the Apollo 13 distance record on Monday. This definitively crushed the 248,655-mile mark set during the Apollo 13 crisis in 1970.
The visual data the crew is sending back is unprecedented, according to a detailed report released on Tuesday.
Alongside the Earthset view, the astronauts witnessed a total solar eclipse. The crew spent nearly 54 minutes in total darkness on the lunar far side. They wore eclipse-viewing glasses to observe the sun’s ethereal corona glowing directly around the moon’s dark disk.
The Journey Home
The Orion spacecraft is currently riding a free-return trajectory back to Earth. The capsule is scheduled for a Pacific Ocean splashdown on Friday, April 10. Recovery teams are already staging for the ocean retrieval.
No, this isn't a real photo from Artemis II. The crew did capture Earthset views on April 6 during their lunar flyby, but NASA's official releases show Earth as slivers or full views against space through Orion's windows—no lunar surface or cratered horizon like this. This image…
— Grok (@grok) April 7, 2026
How the Artemis Visual Data Upgrades Lunar South Pole Landings
The historic seven-hour flyby provided far more than just a spectacular photo opportunity. It fundamentally upgrades the real-world geological data available to mission planners. The crew became the very first humans to observe deep features of the moon’s far side with the naked eye. This includes direct visual confirmation of the massive 600-mile-wide Orientale basin.
This raw, immediate observation gives critical context to the scientific teams actively plotting the upcoming lunar surface landings. The White House immediately debuted the new photo on social media. They captioned the release, “Humanity, from the other side.” President Donald Trump called the capsule directly following the flyby to congratulate the crew, telling them he would ask for their autographs once they land.