Orion POV: Destination and Home, Artemis II

The Moon, the Earth, and the spacecraft between them. All in one frame. April 6, 2026, 6:42 p.m. ET. Everything is in this photograph. Orion, lit by the Sun on the right. The Moon behind it, waxing crescent. And Earth, tiny in comparison, a small bright arc about to set below the lunar horizon. Three objects, three scales. The spacecraft that carries four people. The destination they're flying toward. And home, shrinking to a sliver 250,000 miles behind them. This is not a composite. Not a render. It's a single frame captured during the Artemis II flyby on the sixth day of the mission, one minute after Earthset began. The kind of image where you keep finding details the longer you look at it. This image retains its original framing as captured aboard Orion. The visible grain is inherent to deep space photography conditions. We keep it as is. It's part of what makes this real. Photo: NASA / Artemis II, Lunar Flyby