More than 57 years after the famous photograph of “dawn of the earth” taken by Apollo 8, the Artemis II astronauts captured a “putting” of the planet on the horizon of the Moon while They started to return home.
After a lunar flyby full of memorable moments, the four Artemis II astronauts—the Americans Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch y Victor Glover, and the Canadian Jeremy Hansen— began their journey back to Earth.
You may also be interested in: Artemis II begins its return after a record flight
“I was surprised to notice not only the beauty of the Earth, but also all the darkness that surrounded it, and how much that made it even more extraordinary,” Christina Koch, the first woman to fly over the Moon, said Tuesday during a communication with the International Space Station (ISS).
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.
The four crew members made history by becoming the humans who have traveled the furthest into space, at a distance of 406,771 km from Earth, 6,000 km further than the crew of the Apollo 13 in 1970.
Finally, the view of the planet must have been “absolutely overwhelming”Jenni Gibbons, in charge of communications with the crew, told AFP.
Leave a Reply