NASA Artemis II Gallery Reveals First Human Photos Of Lunar Far Side In 50 Years

by Aaron Leong — Wednesday, April 08, 2026, 10:45 AM EDT

More than five decades after the last human set foot on the lunar surface, NASA’s Artemis II mission has provided a breathtaking new perspective of our home world and its celestial neighbor through a series of historic images.

The released gallery, captured during the crew's seven-hour pass over the lunar far side on April 6, features the first-ever "Earthset" photographed by human hands. Unlike the iconic "Earthrise" taken by Apollo 8, which came to symbolize a new beginning for environmental consciousness, the latest image shows a crescent Earth slipping behind the rugged, cratered horizon of the Moon. Taken from a vantage point of 4,067 miles above the surface, the photograph reveals the swirling white clouds of Australia and Oceania set against the deep black of the void.

*First solar eclipse as viewed from deep space*

Shortly after witnessing the Earth disappear, the crew (comprised of Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen) experienced a phenomenon never before seen by human eyes: a total solar eclipse from deep space. For nearly 54 minutes, the Moon completely obscured the Sun from the perspective of the Orion spacecraft. The resulting images show the Sun’s corona almost as a shimmering halo of white light, an observation typically hindered by Earth’s atmosphere.

During this period, Glover went all poetic on us and described the surface of the Moon as "the gray that blends and drifts into the blackness," noting that the lunar terrain remained visible even in the Sun's shadow, illuminated by the faint reflected glow of the Earth. The crew used specialized eclipse glasses to observe the transition as a bright sliver of sunlight finally peeked from behind the lunar limb.

moon shot — *A close-up view taken by the Artemis II crew of Vavilov Crater on the rim of the older and larger Hertzsprung basin*

These visual spectacles also coincided with a physical one, as the Orion spacecraft reached a maximum distance of 252,756 miles from Earth, breaking the human spaceflight record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. The mission also provided high-res views of the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin and the Hertzsprung basin, areas characterized by long, dramatic shadows at the boundary where lunar day meets night.

As the Integrity capsule journeys back toward Earth, Koch signaled the long-term intent of the program, radioing back that the mission was merely the prelude to scientific outposts and rover expeditions. So even as these fantastic images serve as PR content; they're also crucial data points for following Artemis missions, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface in the coming years.