At this point in the history of human spaceflight POTresearchers have a substantial amount of material—documents, artifacts, and images—with which to tell the stories of past space flights. But with the mission Artemis II around the moon now completed, we are getting a renewed look at the space.
And digital photographs transmitted back to Earth—even during the mission—tell a modern story of the crew’s experience. Entire generations born after the last close views of the Moon in 1972, during Apollo 17, could doubt the reality of Artemis II in the era of AI-generated deepfakes. But this mission was real, and four humans can tell the story of their adventure using photographs stored safely on memory cards now in the hands of NASA.
As a space historian and curator with extensive experience in the visual culture of human spaceflight, I have long waited to see photographs of a return to the Moon.
In the post-Apollo era, images of space travel were characterized by shuttles launching, space stations similar to construction sets, and Mars rovers crossing dusty landscapes. Although the Artemis II photos have similar timeless elements to those of the Apollo, better photography tools give them a clean, crisp look. Space travel now looks more like how many people imagine it should look: grand, adventurous, bold, sublime.
1 / 29 | This was the return of the Orion capsule to Earth. Artemis II mission pilot Victor Glover descends from the recovery helicopter onto a Navy ship in the Pacific off the coast of California. -NASA
As part of Generation X, I have no personal memories of Apollo. Like many people born after NASA’s first lunar missions, my memories of space include images like the ill-fated Challenger launch; the return to orbit of Mercury astronaut John Glenn on a space shuttle in 1998, at age 77; and deep space photos from the Hubble Space Telescope. But these events did not include humans on or near the Moon, and many people my age are hungry for their own lunar memories to share.
Thanks to the internet and social media, which allow images to be accessed more quickly and volume than ever before, photographs of the Artemis II crew became almost instantly iconic. They were also compared to the above, as they fit within a mental catalog of exploration photography much older than the first human attempts at space travel.
Planning and taking photos
The Artemis II crew members—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—received weeks of photography training with a variety of Nikon digital cameras and iPhones. Taking photos with the device that so many people carry in their pockets is a huge leap from the photographic equipment used during Apollo 17—even compared to the 35mm cameras of the 1960s.
NASA’s preference for using the Nikon D5 on the International Space Station has extended to Artemis II. This camera performs well, and NASA values the proven reliability when astronauts travel to space.
NASA took a quite different path when planning Moon imaging for Artemis, compared to Apollo. First, the Orion ship used in Artemis is larger and has twice as many windows and chambers inside. Five of Orion’s six windows had live streaming video cameras capturing the lunar flyby.
Because of its wide trajectory around the Moon at a greater distance than any Apollo flight, this crew was able to see more of the Moon in a single glance.
The Artemis crew trained intensively with geologists and other scientists to keep an eye out for possible future landing sites, craters, and other interesting events or features. People following the mission live online could hear his descriptions of what they saw. The conversation between the astronauts in the Orion capsule and the Artemis science team was also broadcast.
New exciting photos
Depending on the launch date and the position of the Moon, the crew was prepared for unique angles such as “Earth setting”—similar to a sunset—and a solar eclipse.
“Earthdawn” — similar to a sunrise — was made famous by Apollo 8. But it was not visible in the same way to Artemis II due to the Moon’s current dark phase. So while the opportunity to compare a current Earth sunrise with that of 1968 was missed, another early moment in the mission offered what could be an even more spectacular visual alignment with Apollo memories.
In 1972, as the Apollo 17 crew began their journey to the Moon, geologist Harrison Schmitt captured a series of images of Earth’s fully illuminated disk approximately five hours into the mission. This photo became an icon in a series of iconic photographs of the space age, and probably of the entire 20th century. It even appeared in the Al Gore movie “An uncomfortable truth”.
That was the Earth of 1972, and now we have the Earth of 2026—both as documents of singular moments in the planet’s long history. This new photograph shows Earth—illuminated by the glow of the Moon, not the Sun as in the Apollo 17 photo—in the black void of space, with the thin strip of our atmosphere protecting life and generating polar auroras.
Schmitt’s “Blue Marble” remained for more than five decades as one of the most viewed photographs in history. And although people on Earth saw the new version of Artemis within hours of being captured, it may receive less public recognition in an era of photo manipulation and advanced technology.
These first images of Artemis II are just the tip of the visual iceberg. Modern memory cards have a capacity that will allow the number of digital images from Artemis II to far exceed the nearly 4,000 photographs taken during Apollo 17.
In the weeks and months ahead, as images from the mission fill online databases, the importance of Artemis II as a new vision of human space exploration will continue to grow, building on the lessons of Apollo.