This week, we got a different moon—the Artemis moon. The moon captured by America’s first mission there in generations is not the moon I look for every time I step outside. It is not the moon I grew up with or the one my parents learned about during the Apollo missions.

The end of the historic Artemis II mission kicks off a race to establish a permanent human presence on the moon.

While science can seem colorless and plain, NASA’s lunar crew members have brought expressiveness and emotion about their journey to mission control and the public.

But on Monday, as the Artemis II spacecraft flew between 6,000 and 7,000 kilometers above the lunar far side, the human crew saw new craters forming before their eyes. They watched the moon take a beating. “That was definitely impact flashes on the moon. And Jeremy (Hansen) just saw another one,” mission commander Reid Wiseman reported to Earth.

Over seven hours, the astronauts took thousands of photos that will help inform scientists’ understanding of the moon. The first ones have now been released.

The Nostalgic Visit To Deep Space ​The Artemis II mission in April 2026 marked a massive turning point for space […]

The Artemis II crew has now broken the record — previously held by Apollo 13 — for the farthest distance any humans have ever travelled from Earth. The crew also completed a flyby of the moon’s far side and sent back some amazing images of the lunar surface.

Dr. Marvel was, until recently, a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Artemis II’s journey around the moon, scheduled to conclude on Friday, has delivered stunning new images of our home world taken from space.

The Artemis II astronauts fielded questions during an in-space news conference Wednesday, April 8, aboard their Orion spacecraft Integrity.