Kamal Ghorui
The Artemis II crew on Friday shared an image of Earth from the spaceship embarking on first lunar voyage in more than half a century.In a social media post on X, Nasa shared the photo with the caption, “That’s us!”“The Artemis II crew captured beautiful, high-resolution images of our home planet during their journey to the Moon. As Christina Koch put it: ‘You guys look great,'” Nasa added.Four astronauts embarked on a high-stakes flight around the Moon on Wednesday, marking humanity’s first lunar voyage in over 50 years and a thrilling kickoff to NASA’s push toward a moon landing in two years.Carrying three Americans and a Canadian, the 32-story rocket was launched from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center.It is Nasa’s biggest step yet toward establishing a permanent lunar presence. The next major milestone will be Monday’s lunar flyby.Orion will zoom 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) beyond the Moon before turning back, providing unprecedented, illuminated views of the lunar far side, at least for human eyes. The cosmos will even treat the Artemis II astronauts to a total solar eclipse as the Moon temporarily blocks the Sun from their perspective.While awaiting their orbital departure earlier Thursday, the astronauts savored views of Earth from tens of thousands of miles high. Koch told Mission Control that they could make out entire coastlines of continents and even the South Pole, her old stomping ground.Nasa is counting on the test flight to kickstart the entire Artemis program and pave the way for a moon landing by two astronauts in 2028.Artemis II launched from the same Florida site that sent up Apollo explorers decades ago. The few surviving Apollo astronauts cheered the next generation’s grand adventure as the Space Launch System rocket thundered into the early evening sky.The astronauts will remain close to Earth for the first 25 hours of their 10-day test flight, checking out the capsule in orbit before firing the main engine that will propel them to the Moon.
