When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.NASA posted this photo of Earth, snapped by its moonbound Artemis 2 crew, on the social media site X on April 3, 2026. | Credit: NASA/Reid WisemanThe Artemis 2 astronauts have shared a view that the billions of us stuck on Earth will never get firsthand: a gorgeous shot of our home planet shining like a sapphire in the blackness of space.What is it?This photo shows Earth as seen from Artemis 2’s Orion spacecraft, which on Thursday evening (April 2) aced a crucial engine burn that took it out of Earth orbit and toward the moon.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe Artemis 2 astronauts — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen — have since been watching Earth recede into the distance, and NASA shared one of their photos today (April 3) on the social media site X.”We see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere. That’s us, together, watching as our astronauts make their journey to the moon,” NASA officials wrote in the X post.Why is it amazing?The photo by itself is amazing enough, showing our planet as it truly is — a shimmering, fragile outpost of life in a vast and dark cosmos. But the connection to Artemis 2 makes it even more special.Artemis 2 is the first crewed moon mission since Apollo 17 back in 1972. If all goes to plan, Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen will loop around the moon on Day 6 of the mission, which lifted off on April 1. They’ll come back to Earth for a splashdown on Day 10.AdvertisementAdvertisementArtemis 2 won’t land on the moon or even enter lunar orbit. It’s designed to pave the way for those milestones, and in fact even more ambitious ones: NASA’s Artemis program aims to build a base near the lunar south pole in the early 2030s.Keep tabs on the mission’s latest developments with our Artemis 2 live updates page. …
