Astronauts capture Earth’s brilliant blue beauty

OUR HOME This image, provided by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), shows a downlink image of Earth taken by Nasa’s Artemis II astronaut commander Reid Wiseman inside the Orion capsule. —NASA VIA AP

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA—The Artemis II astronauts have captured our blue planet’s brilliant beauty as they zoom ever closer to the moon.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) released the crew’s first downlinked images on Friday, 1 1/2 days into the first astronaut moonshot in more than half a century.

The first photo taken by commander Reid Wiseman shows a curved slice of Earth in one of the capsule’s windows. The second shows the entire globe with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds.

As of midmorning on Friday, Wiseman and his crew were 145,000 kilometers (km) from Earth and were quickly gaining on the moon with another 270,000 km to go. They should reach their destination on Monday.

Swing around moon

The three Americans and one Canadian will swing around the moon in their Orion capsule, hang a U-turn and then head straight back home without stopping. They fired Orion’s main engine on Thursday night, which set them on their course.

They’re the first lunar travelers since Apollo 17 in 1972.