We are one people: Artemis 2 sends message of unity on the road to the Moon
The photographs were taken after the translunar injection burn completed on Thursday, April 2
The Artemis 2 crew sent the first photographs of Earth taken from the Orion capsule on its historic journey to the Moon, accompanied by a message of unity at a moment of global turmoil. They are the first images captured by astronauts on a lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.
From up here you all look amazing and beautiful. And you look like one thing. Homo sapiens is what we all are, no matter where we come from or what we look like. We are one people, said mission pilot Victor Glover, the first African American to travel to the Moon. This mission gives us something to hold on to and say: look what we did. We call the great human achievements moonshots for a reason: because they unite us and prove what we can accomplish together, he added.
The four photographs, released by NASA on the mission’s third day, were taken by Commander Reid Wiseman using his personal device from the windows of the Orion capsule, which the crew named Integrity. In the main image, Earth appears fully illuminated in blue and brown tones, with two auroras visible at opposite ends of the planet and a band of zodiacal light where Earth eclipses the Sun. NASA described the African continent as a large brown landmass with the Iberian Peninsula twinkling with lights right where the planet curves.
Another image shows the dividing line between day and night, while a fourth captures the planet in darkness, lit by the electric glow of human activity. Even in the dark, we shine, the space agency posted.
Even in darkness, we glow.
In this image of Earth taken by the Artemis II crew, we can see the electric lights of human activity. In the lower right, sunlight illuminates the limb of the planet. pic.twitter.com/kWcjHFvoDM
— NASA (@NASA) April 3, 2026
The photographs were taken after the translunar injection burn completed on Thursday, April 2 — an approximately six-minute firing of the service module’s main engine that propelled the capsule out of Earth’s orbit and onto its trajectory toward the Moon. With that maneuver, the four astronauts — Wiseman, Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — became the first humans to leave Earth’s orbit in more than half a century.
When Houston reoriented our spacecraft, just as the Sun was setting behind Earth, we could see the entire planet from pole to pole. You could see Africa, Europe and, if you looked closely, the aurora borealis. It was the most spectacular moment. It stopped all four of us in our tracks, Wiseman said during a press conference.
Koch highlighted an unprecedented aspect of the mission: it is the first time astronauts traveling to the Moon have photographed Earth while other humans are simultaneously in space, aboard the International Space Station.
By Friday, the crew was more than 100,000 miles from Earth, with roughly 150,000 miles still to go. The lunar flyby is scheduled for Monday, April 6, when the astronauts will observe and photograph the lunar surface, including areas of the far side never directly seen by humans. The 10-day mission does not include a landing, but lays the groundwork for future Artemis missions that aim to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2028.
