Artemis II astronauts spent Monday rounding the moon‘s edge, digital cameras in hand, snapping views of craters, an eclipse, and a blue marble rising and setting in deep space.
Inside NASA‘s Orion spacecraft, Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen took turns at the windows like kids on their first plane ride.
They spent about seven hours rotating through observation shifts on the sixth day of the mission, swapping lenses, calling out features, and firing off photos as the spacecraft arced around the far side of the moon.
At closest approach, they skimmed within about 4,000 miles of the lunar surface — close enough for every ridge, crater, and shadow to snap into sharp relief. The astronauts surprised mission control with descriptions of the surface appearing more brown than gray, with even some splotches of green and snowy white.
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