Have you ever seen the far side of the moon?

In a new image, snapped by astronauts aboard NASA's Artemis 2 mission on April 6, 2026, you can see a little piece of the moon's far side.

NOTE: It is not known if the crew was listening to Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" when this image was captured.

What is it?

On April 6, the crew onboard NASA's Artemis 2 mission's Orion spacecraft were in the middle of their mission and flying by the moon.

This mission, which launched on April 1 and splashed back down to Earth on April 10, sent a crew of four astronauts on a journey around the moon and back. This was the first crewed mission to the moon since NASA's final Apollo mission in 1972, over 50 years ago.

On their incredible journey, the Artemis 2 crew went farther from Earth than humans have ever gone before — a whopping 252,756 miles (406,771 kilometers) miles from home.

Why is it incredible?

During their lunar flyby, the crew actually flew behind the moon, allowing them to see its mysterious far side.

The moon is tidally locked in our orbit. This means that the moon has a side that is always facing us (the near side) and one that is perpetually facing away (the far side). The far side is sometimes known as the "dark side of the moon," which is inaccurate, because sunlight bathes it as well.

As the Orion capsule flew behind the moon, communications between Earth and the crew actually stopped for about 40 minutes.

This photograph is a beautiful insight into those minutes of quiet, when the crew observed what we so rarely are able to see.

Artemis 2 has come home.

The four Artemis 2 astronauts splashed down off the coast of San Diego this evening (April 10), wrapping up an epic mission that broke spaceflight records, caught the attention of the world and set the stage for even more ambitious moonshots to come.

"From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete. Integrity's astronauts are back on Earth," NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said just after splashdown, referring to the name of Artemis 2's Orion capsule.

A mission of firsts

Artemis 2 launched on April 1, sending four explorers — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen — toward the moon inside Integrity.

It was the second-ever liftoff for NASA's huge Space Launch System rocket and the first crewed flight for both SLS and Orion.

Artemis 2 was a mission of firsts in many other ways as well. For starters, it launched humanity back to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in December 1972. Glover was the first person of color ever to leave Earth orbit, and Koch and Hansen were the first woman and first non-American, respectively, to do so. (The Apollo astronauts had been the only people to achieve this feat, and they were all white American men.)

"We sent four amazing people to the moon and safely returned them to Earth for the first time in more than 50 years," Lori Glaze, NASA's Artemis program manager, said after the splashdown. "To the generation that now knows what we're capable of, 'Welcome to our moonshot.'"

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who watched the Artemis 2 astronauts return to Earth from the deck of their recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha, seemed in awe of the entire mission.

"Honestly, I'm still at a loss for words," Isaacman said after splashdown during NASA's televised commentary. "The childhood Jared, right now, can't believe what I just saw. I mean, I've almost been waiting my whole lifetime to see to see this, and then it's as NASA administrator. I just couldn't be more proud of the entire workforce, the years, the effort, the late nights, all the hard work from across the country that contributed to this incredible moment right now."

Artemis 2 also took a unique path to Earth's nearest neighbor — a "free-return" trajectory that featured a single loop around the far side. The Apollo moon missions, by contrast, targeted lunar orbit, after which some of them touched down on the gray dirt.

Apollo 13 ended up flying a free-return trajectory in April 1970, but that wasn't by design; that mission was supposed to orbit and then land on the moon, but it suffered an explosion en route that scuttled that plan and forced its astronauts into survival mode.

Apollo 13's unplanned lunar loop sent it 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from Earth, farther than any humans had ever gone before. Artemis 2 broke that record during its own flyby on Monday (April 6), which took the crewmates 252,756 miles (406,771 km) from their home planet. (From liftoff to landing, the Artemis 2 crew flew a total of 700,237 miles, or 1.1 million km.)

They don't want to hold this record for half a century, though, for that would signal a disappointing stagnation in human spaceflight.

"We, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived," Hansen said shortly after Artemis 2 surpassed Apollo 13.

The Apollo capsules held a maximum of three astronauts. So Artemis 2 was the first mission to fly four people to deep space, as well as the first to send a bona fide toilet beyond Earth orbit. Artemis 2's space toilet had some issues, but it was still a giant leap for deep-space hygiene; the Apollo astronauts did their business into handheld bags.

The moon up close — and a solar eclipse, too!

But Artemis 2 wasn't about setting records. It was primarily a shakeout cruise, designed to show that SLS and Orion can fly crewed missions beyond Earth orbit.

There were some science objectives, too. After all, the Artemis 2 astronauts were getting humanity's first up-close looks at the moon in more than 50 years.

And their free-return trajectory, which featured a lunar close-approach distance of 4,067 miles (6,545 km), gave them different, more zoomed-out views than those of the Apollo astronauts, who mostly observed the moon from a tight orbit. Indeed, during their flyby, the Artemis 2 astronauts saw parts of the far side never before seen with human eyes, which are incredibly capable instruments.

"Human eyes and brains are highly sensitive to subtle changes in color, texture and other surface characteristics," NASA officials wrote in an Artemis 2 explainer.

"Having astronaut eyes observe the lunar surface directly, in combination with the context of all the advances that scientists have made about the moon over the last several decades, may uncover new discoveries and a more nuanced appreciation for the features on the surface of the moon," they added.

So NASA scientists prepped the Artemis 2 crewmates extensively, giving them a long list of viewing targets and instructions on how to observe them.

One of the highest-priority landforms was Orientale Basin. This 600-mile-wide (965 km) crater, known as the "Grand Canyon of the moon," had never been seen in sunlight before, so the science team was keen to get Artemis 2's eyes on it.

The astronauts obliged, returning detailed observations of Orientale. They reported back effusively about many other features as well. Glover, for example, was particularly taken with the terminator, the boundary between day and night on the moon.

"There's just so much magic in the terminator — the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes; you'd fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those," he radioed to Mission Control during the flyby. "It's just so visually captivating." The crew reported seeing colors on the moon as well, describing some regions as green and brown.

The Artemis 2 astronauts also got to see a total solar eclipse during Monday's flyby, a happy accident of orbital dynamics locked in by the fact that they launched on April 1. (The eclipse wasn't visible to us here on Earth.)

Because the moon loomed so large in Artemis 2's view, it blocked the sun for a whopping 54 minutes — far longer than totality lasts during solar eclipses seen from Earth.

The astronauts dutifully recorded details of the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, during the epic event. But they took some time to appreciate it on an emotional level as well.

"When that actually happened, it just blew us all away," Glover said in a call with reporters on Wednesday (April 8). He called it "unreal" when he watched it in real-time.

There were many such human moments on this mission, and we got to see them thanks to NASA's 24/7 livestream. For instance, just after Artemis 2 broke Apollo 13's distance record, Hansen radioed Mission Control asking for permission to name two heretofore anonymous craters on the moon — one after Integrity and one after Wiseman's late wife Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

As Hansen made the case for Carroll Crater, his crewmates fought off tears, without much success.

"For me personally, that was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission," Wiseman said in Wednesday's call. "That was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded, and we came out of that really focused on that day ahead."

Mission Control agreed to both name proposals, by the way, though they won't get onto official moon maps until the International Astronomical Union gives the thumbs-up as well.

Coming home

Monday's lunar flyby did more than break a spaceflight record and enable unprecedented science observations; it also charted Integrity's course back to Earth. Indeed, that was the main reason NASA picked the free-return trajectory for Artemis 2: Relying on lunar gravity to send Orion home eliminated the need for a major engine burn, reducing risks for this test mission.

So there wasn't a lot of drama over the past few days as Integrity made its way back toward Earth. But that was just as well, for today's homecoming had plenty of drama — and a fair bit of danger.

Spacecraft returning from the moon hit Earth's atmosphere at tremendous speeds — 24,000 mph (38,600 kph) or thereabouts. This generates huge amounts of frictional heating; temperatures around the vehicle can hit 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius).

Orion has a heat shield to deal with such temperatures — the biggest one ever built for crewed flight, in fact, at 16.5 feet (5 meters) wide. But that heat shield showed some cracks on the lone previous Artemis mission — Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back in late 2022.

Because of that unexpected damage, NASA tweaked Artemis 2's reentry profile, bringing Integrity in on a steeper angle to limit the amount of time its heat shield was exposed to extreme conditions in the atmosphere. But the agency didn't modify the heat shield itself, stressing that the hardware was up to the challenge.

Still, when Orion hit the Earth's atmosphere and went radio silent for six minutes due to the interference from plasma during descent, there was some nervousness in Mission Control.

"Certainly, there's anxiety," Artemis 2 entry flight director Rick Henfling said after splashdown in a press conference. "If you didn't have anxiety bringing the spacecraft home, you probably didn't have a pulse."

But he and his team had extreme confidence in Orion's heat shield and performance, as did the rest of Mission Control and the astronauts themselves.

That confidence was well placed, for Integrity survived its trial by fire today. The capsule hit the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean southeast of Hawaii at 7:53 p.m. (2353 GMT). Ten minutes later, the capsule's drogue parachutes deployed as planned, followed in short succession by its three big main chutes.

The mains helped slow Integrity's descent to 19 mph (31 kph) — the speed it was traveling when it hit the water at 8:07 p.m. EDT (0007 GMT on April 11) off the coast of San Diego, about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the spot where it first slammed into the atmosphere.

"A perfect bulls-eye splashdown for Integrity and its four astronauts," Navias said. "It was, for all intents and purposes, a textbook mission."

The USS John P. Murtha, from Naval Base San Diego — was waiting in the area to welcome the astronauts home, and to get them to shore for medical checks. All four were reported to be in good health and good spirits.

Bigger things coming

Artemis 2 was a big deal, but it will lead to even more ambitious missions in the next few years, if all goes according to plan.

It's a step toward the chief goal of the Artemis program: establishing a crewed outpost near the moon's south pole by the early 2030s. This region is thought to be rich in water ice, which can be used for life support and also processed into rocket fuel. NASA believes that building such a base will help it map out an even grander project — landing astronauts on Mars, which the agency aims to do in the late 2030s or early 2040s.

With Artemis 2 in the books, NASA can now turn its attention to Artemis 3, which is scheduled to send astronauts to Earth orbit in mid-2027. They'll test docking procedures up there using Orion and one or both of the Artemis program's contracted lunar landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

After that will come Artemis 4, which will use one of those privately developed vehicles to put astronauts down near the lunar south pole in late 2028. The timeline is aggressive by design: China aims to pull off its own crewed lunar landing by 2030, and the U.S. wants to win this new space race.

"The path to the lunar surface is open, but the work ahead is greater than the work behind us. It always will be," NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said in the briefing. "Fifty-three years ago, humanity left the moon. This time, we return to stay."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:30 a.m. ET on April 11 to include additional details and comments from NASA's post Artemis 2 splashdown briefing. Space.com Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik contributed to this report.

Traveling far from her home planet helped Artemis 2 astronaut Christina Koch appreciate it even more.

Koch and her crewmates talked with some of their International Space Station (ISS) counterparts on Tuesday (April 7), a day after Artemis 2's epic flyby of the moon. And the station astronauts had lots of questions for the deep-space explorers.

The first one came from NASA's Jessica Meir, who knows Koch well: The duo performed the first-ever all-female spacewalk outside the ISS back in 2020.

"We know how fortunate all of us are as humans to come up here and look down at the Earth from above; every astronaut that comes to space remarks on that," Meir said.

She was referring to the "overview effect," the often life-changing shift in perspective that comes from seeing our planet as it truly is — a fragile world that looks very alone in a vast and dark cosmos.

"We really wanted to hear what that felt like, and how different that felt now from your new perspective around the moon," Meir continued.

"I'll start by saying we do miss the ISS," Koch responded. (Wiseman and Glover have also lived aboard the station; Hansen is a spaceflight rookie.) "The views there are awesome, being able to see specific places — being able to see your home, specifically. So y'all's views are absolutely incredible, and I miss them every day, almost."

Then she described the difference, as Meir requested.

"The thing that changed for me looking back at Earth was that I found myself noticing not only the beauty of the Earth, but how much blackness there was around it, and how it just made it even more special," Koch said.

"It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive," she added. "We evolved on the same planet, we have some shared things about how we love and live that are just universal, and the specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized when you notice how much else there is around it."

All four Artemis 2 crewmates — Koch, fellow NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — took part in the 15-minute call.

On the ISS, Meir shared the microphone with NASA's Chris Williams and Jack Hathaway, and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency. The three cosmonauts currently living on the orbiting lab — Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev and Andrey Fedyaev — did not participate.

Adenot asked the Artemis 2 astronauts what has surprised them during their mission so far.

"I don't mean to give you such a short answer, but I can truly say 'everything,'" Glover replied.

He cited many of the mission's major milestones, from its April 1 liftoff atop a Space Launch System rocket to its maneuvers in Earth orbit to its journey to, and flyby of, the moon.

"This entire journey has been interesting," Glover said.

Artemis 2 — the first crewed mission beyond Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972 — is now headed back to Earth. The four astronauts will get here on Friday (April 10), splashing down that evening off the coast of San Diego.

NASA will then start gearing up for Artemis 3, which will test docking and rendezvous technologies in Earth orbit in 2027. After that will come Artemis 4, which aims to land astronauts near the moon's south pole in late 2028.

The Artemis 2 astronauts' photography skills were up to the epic task.

The spaceflyers — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — flew around the far side of the moon on Monday (April 6), something no humans had done since NASA's Apollo 17 mission back in 1972.

The Artemis 2 quartet chronicled their historic journey in detail, capturing some photos that could help scientists better understand lunar geology and evolution, and others that seemed designed just to blow our minds. Here are a few of the most amazing ones.

Let's start with the above photo, which provides a new and mind-bending perspective on our home planet. Have you ever seen it like this, tiny and crescent-shaped, perched above a seemingly huge and dominant moon?

The Artemis 2 crew snapped that spectacular shot a little more than halfway into the flyby on Monday. It captures the moments before Earthset, when our home planet disappeared behind the lunar limb from the astronauts' perspective. (The photo at the top of this story is also an Earthset shot.)

This flyby photo highlights the Orientale Basin, a 600-mile-wide (965-kilometer-wide) feature known as the "Grand Canyon of the moon."

Human eyes had never seen Orientale in sunlight before, so the Artemis science team asked the astronauts to observe it very thoroughly. And they did, as Wiseman's description of one of the basin's features indicates.

"The annular ring, which I think everybody kind of describes as like a pair of lips or a kiss on the far side of the moon, from here is very circular in nature," Wiseman, the Artemis 2 commander, radioed to Mission Control.

"The northern part of it is wider, darker; the southern part is much lighter," he added. "It is very neat-looking — far more circular than I remember it looking in our training."

The crewmembers also got great looks at the moon's terminator — not a murderous cyborg roaming the gray landscape but rather the boundary line between day and night on the lunar surface. And it made quite an impression on them, especially Glover.

"Boy, I'm loving the terminator," he told Mission Control. "I've probably spent the most time describing into my recordings and thinking about and looking at the terminator.

"There's just so much magic in the terminator," he added. "The islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes — you'd fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those. It's just so visually captivating. The terminator is the most striking thing that I've seen so far."

The astronauts also got looks at parts of the South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the most dramatic features on the moon. It's the largest confirmed impact crater in the solar system, stretching more than 1,550 miles (2,500 km) from rim to rim.

And the south polar area is of great interest to scientists and Artemis mission planners. The region is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice, on the permanently shadowed floors of many of its craters. NASA plans to build one or more bases in the area in the 2030s, tapping into that water ice to support crews and to fuel rockets. (Water ice can be split into hydrogen and oxygen, key components of rocket fuel.)

Toward the end of Monday's flyby, the Artemis 2 astronauts were treated to a rare celestial spectacle: A total solar eclipse, seen from beyond the moon.

The eclipse wasn't visible to anyone on Earth; it was a consequence of Artemis 2's trajectory, which happened to line the moon and sun up in the proper way.

And it was very different than solar eclipses seen from our planet. Because the moon loomed so large to the Artemis 2 crew, it blocked out the sun for much longer — about 54 minutes, compared to 7.5 minutes, which is the approximate maximum period of totality for eclipses seen from terra firma.

The crew captured gorgeous photos of the eclipse, including one (shown above) in which Venus is visible. But they went about their business safely, donning eclipse glasses at the proper times, just as we must do here on Earth to protect our eyes.

The Artemis 2 astronauts are now on their way home, helped out by the historic flyby, which served to slingshot them back toward Earthj. They'll arrive here on Friday (April 10), ending their 10-day mission with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego.

But they'll doubtless carry the lunar flyby, and the entire mission, with them for the rest of their lives.

"It was an incredible experience," Koch said shortly after the flyby. "I just had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon."

HOUSTON — President Donald Trump on Monday hailed the courage and grit of NASA's Artemis 2 astronauts after their historic flyby around the moon, a feat that made them the farthest-traveled humans of all time.

"Today, you made history and made all of America really proud, incredibly proud," Trump told the four Artemis 2 astronauts just hours after they soared over the far side of the moon. "There's nothing like what you're doing, circling around the moon for the first time in more than a half century and breaking the all-time record for the farthest distance from planet Earth."

The Artemis 2 astronauts — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch (all of NASA) and Jeremy Hansen of Canada — spent seven hours on Monday (April 6) observing parts of the moon never before seen by human eyes. Their 10-day mission, which began with a launch from Florida atop NASA's mightiest rocket, the Space Launch System, on April 1, is the first human flight to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

"Mr. President, this call is certainly special to all of us … We are doing great things, and we're proud to be a part of it," Wiseman radioed back from over 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away. "We saw sights no human had ever seen before, not even Apollo, and that was amazing for us."

Trump asked the astronauts how they felt when they lost contact with Earth for 40 minutes on the far side of the moon. Glover said he "said a little prayer and then I had to keep rolling" and get back to work on lunar observations.

Trump also asked if any of the crew had anything to say to the American people. Koch opted to share a highlight of coming around the far side of the moon.

"I think one of the biggest highlights was coming back from the far side of the moon and having the first glimpse of the planet Earth again after being out of communication for about 45 minutes," Koch said. "It really just reminds you what a special place we have and how important it is for our nation to lead and not follow in exploring deep space."

During the 12-minute call, Trump cheered the bravery of the Artemis 2 astronauts, hailed his pick for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, for taking charge of the U.S. space agency and name-dropped the U.S. Space Force — a military branch he created in his first term — as his "baby."

"Space Force is very much related to what you're doing, and that was my baby. That was a very important one," Trump said. "It turned out to be one of the most important type of decisions I've ever made. So we're very proud. We're very proud of all of you, too."

Trump said that in his first term he faced a decision on whether to close NASA down or revive it. (His first administration did push the Artemis program forward to target a crewed return to the moon, but didn't talk of closing the agency outright.)

Trump also hailed the courage of Hansen, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut, whose nation he referred to as a "neighbor" of the United States.

"You have a special person over there, a neighbor," Trump said, adding that he'd spoken to both the Canadian Prime Minister and hockey legend Wayne Gretzky about the astronaut.

Hansen shared how the near and far sides of the moon are very different places and thanked Trump on behalf of Canada for inviting other nations to join the U.S. return to the moon.

"On behalf of Canada, the space leadership you spoke of from America is truly extraordinary," Hansen said. "A nation that leads like that and creates and sets big goals for humanity, that brings other countries along with it, is truly incredible."

At one point, the Artemis 2 crew seemed unable to hear Trump and lost audio contact, leading to an awkward pause in the discussion.

"Can we just get a quick comm check to make sure you guys are still online and we didn't have a handover?" Wiseman said.

"I am," Trump replied, adding that the reception from the moon was "great."

Trump's call to the Artemis 2 crew came just before a question-and-answer session Isaacman held with the astronauts to get their first impressions on the lunar flyby.

"We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing," Isaacman joked, referring to the toilet troubles the crew has reported on their test flight.

"Thank you for your courage and all of your beautiful words that we heard," Isaacman added. "You represent the absolute best of us. We are proud of you, and we look forward to welcoming you back safely to the good Earth very soon. Godspeed, and go Artemis."

Overall, Trump lauded the Artemis 2 astronauts as true modern-day pioneers on a mission that will pave the way for a crewed moon landing, a permanent moon base and the exploration of other worlds.

"We'll establish a permanent presence on the moon, and we'll push on to Mars and be very excited, been waiting for that so much," Trump said. "We will be second to none in space and everything else that we're doing, and we will continue to lead the whole thing into the stars, this incredible journey into the stars."

He invited them all to visit the White House after they get back to Earth.

"This is really big stuff, the whole world was talking about it," Trump said. "And if you have the time, I will certainly find the time."

Glover answered that they'd be sure to visit, adding that it was the "thrill and honor of a lifetime" to be on the mission.

"It's really special for us, but it's really special for the team on the ground, a whole team of people all around the world pulled this off," Glover said. "Today has been amazing, but this three-year journey was amazing and it was made possible by the American people and the Canadian people."

Artemis 2's historic, action-packed lunar flyby is in the books.

Artemis 2 looped around the moon's far side today (April 6), in a nearly seven-hour encounter that gave its four astronauts views of Earth's nearest neighbor that human eyes had never seen before.

The Artemis 2 crewmembers also observed a total solar eclipse from beyond the moon and set a big spaceflight record, traveling farther from their home planet than anyone ever had before.

A new distance record for humanity

Artemis 2 is the first mission to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 did so way back in 1972. The current flight launched on April 1, sending NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen aloft on board an Orion capsule that the astronauts named "Integrity."

Integrity arrived in lunar space early this morning. The capsule journeyed into the moon's "sphere of influence," the region where lunar gravity is stronger than that of Earth, at 12:37 a.m. EDT (0437 GMT).

About 13.5 hours later, the four Artemis 2 astronauts crossed another threshold, getting more than 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from Earth. That was our species' old distance record, set in April 1970 by the three astronauts of NASA's Apollo 13 mission.

And Integrity continued cruising outward for about five more hours, reaching a maximum distance from Earth of about 252,756 miles (406,771 km) just after 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) — a mark the Artemis 2 crew hopes gets broken soon.

"We, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived," Hansen said shortly after Artemis 2 surpassed Apollo 13.

There were some touching moments as well. As the flyby began, the crew asked to name an unnamed moon crater they observed after their ship Integrity.

Another crater, they proposed, should be named Carroll in honor of Carroll Taylor Wiseman, wife of Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman, who tragically died in 2020 from cancer.

"Integrity and Carroll Crater, loud and clear," Mission Control replied.

Eyes on the moon — for science

But all of this action was just a warmup for the mission's main event — the flyby.

The encounter officially began at 2:45 p.m. EDT (1845 GMT), when Integrity was about 10,700 miles (17,220 km) from the lunar surface. And it was not a sightseeing cruise for the Artemis 2 astronauts; they studied the moon's surface for hours, following a detailed checklist drawn up by the mission science team.

After all, the flyby was a rare research opportunity. People hadn't viewed the moon up close in more than 50 years, and Artemis 2's unique "free return" trajectory — in which it looped around the moon without entering lunar orbit — afforded unprecedented views of the gray, cratered surface.

What's more, the human eye is very good at picking up subtle variations in color and texture — better than robotic spacecraft cameras, in fact. So, the Artemis 2 crew could conceivably detect details that help scientists better understand lunar geology and evolution, and help planners map out future crewed missions to the moon's surface.

One of the astronauts' key observation targets was the Orientale Basin, a 600-mile-wide (965 km) impact crater known as the "Grand Canyon of the moon." It straddles the line between the moon's near and far sides and, until Artemis 2, had never been seen in sunlight by human eyes, according to NASA.

The astronauts were therefore assiduous in their descriptions of the crater. Take, for example, Wiseman's words on one of Orientale's prominent features.

"The annular ring, which I think everybody kind of describes as like a pair of lips or a kiss on the far side of the moon, from here is very circular in nature," Wiseman, the Artemis 2 commander, told Mission Control.

"The northern part of it is wider, darker; the southern part is much lighter," he added. "It is very neat-looking — far more circular than I remember it looking in our training."

Artemis 2 complemented such naked-eye observations with photographic evidence, captured by an array of 32 cameras. Fifteen of those are mounted to Integrity; the other 17 are handheld instruments operated by the astronauts.

Those astronauts aren't robots, of course, so they have emotional reactions to what they see out of Integrity's windows. And Koch shared a bit of what she was feeling during the flyby with Mission Control.

"It was an incredible experience. At one point towards the end of the images of my time in Window 3, I just had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon," Koch said.

"It lasted just a second or two, and I actually couldn't even make it happen again, but something just drew me in suddenly to the lunar landscape, and it became real," she added. "And the truth is, the moon really is its own body in the universe."

At 6:44 p.m. EDT (2244 GMT), Integrity lost contact with Mission Control as it disappeared behind the moon from Earth's perspective. This blackout, or loss of signal (LOS), was completely expected, so it wasn't exactly nerve-wracking.

"We've handed over between Deep Space Network sites the whole mission," Artemis 2 Flight Director Rick Henfling said before the blackout. "This is just like an extended handover. We know where the spacecraft is, we know where it'll be when we come out of LOS, and so we're not worried."

Integrity reestablished contact right on schedule, at 7:24 p.m. EDT (2324 GMT). But some important stuff happened during the 40-minute blackout.

For example, the high point of the flyby — or the low point, in orbital-dynamics terms — came at about 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) when Integrity made its closest approach, skimming a mere 4,067 miles (6,545 km) above the lunar surface. From this distance, the moon looked about as big as a basketball held at arm's length, NASA officials said during the Artemis 2 livestream.

Two minutes later, Artemis reached its farthest point from Earth, which is now the distance record for future astronauts to chase.

A solar eclipse, too

About six hours into the flyby, the Artemis 2 crew turned their attention to a different celestial spectacle — a total solar eclipse, which began at 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 GMT on April 7).

It was a very different sight from the eclipses we're used to here on Earth. Because the moon loomed so large through Integrity's windows, the sun was hidden behind it for much longer — about 53 minutes, compared to a maximum of about 7.5 minutes for any total solar eclipse seen from our planet. (To be clear: This eclipse was visible only to the Artemis 2 astronauts. The moon and sun were not lined up for viewers on Earth.)

Eclipses allow scientists to study the sun's wispy outer atmosphere, known as the corona, which is usually swamped by our star's immense brightness. So, the mission team gave the Artemis 2 crew some instructions.

"We've included prompts for them to describe the features that they can see in the solar corona, which can ultimately help solar scientists understand these processes in general, especially given the unique vantage point that the crew are going to have relative to our orbiting spacecraft here on Earth and our observers, our scientists, here on Earth as well," Kelsey Young, NASA's Artemis science flight operations lead, said during a press conference on Saturday (April 4).

The sun was still dangerous for the Artemis 2 crew to look at; Integrity's windows did not provide the required eye protection. They therefore donned eclipse glasses to watch the event, just as we do here on Earth.

"This is continues to be unreal," Glover said during the eclipse. "The sun has gone behind the moon, and the corona is still visible, and it's bright and it creates a halo almost around the entire moon."

"The Earth is so bright out there, and the moon is just hanging in front of us, this black orb out in front of us," he added. "Wow! It's amazing."

Wiseman concurred.

"That was an absolutely spectacular and magnificent experience," Wiseman said.

The astronauts also reported seeing at least five impact flashes on the moon's darkened surfance, evidence of meteorid impacts on the lunar surface. They also had chances to see Mercury, Mars, Venus and Saturn from beyond the moon, NASA said.

Coming home

The flyby ended tonight at around 9:20 p.m. EDT (0120 GMT on April 7). With that milestone, Artemis 2 entered a new phase: the journey back to Earth.

"I can't say enough how much science we've already learned, and how much inspiration you've provided to our entire team, the lunar science community and the entire world with what you were able to bring today," Young radioed to the Artemis 2 crew after the flyby. "You really brought the moon closer for us today, and we cannot say thank you enough."

Wiseman thanked the science team for all their training that made the crew's observations possible.

"You all knocked it out of the park," Wiseman. "Thank you for giving us this opportunity."

The flyby slingshot Integrity and its occupants back toward Earth, without the need for any major engine burns. The capsule will arrive on Friday evening (April 10), coming home with a parachute-aided splashdown off the coast of San Diego.

That will mark the end of the Artemis 2 mission but the start of a new chapter — the buildup to Artemis 3. That crewed mission, targeted to launch in 2027, will test rendezvous and docking in Earth orbit. If all goes well, NASA will put boots down near the moon's south pole on Artemis 4 in late 2028. And the agency will start building a base there over the next few years.

Editor's note: Space.com Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik and Spaceflight Writer Josh Dinner contributed to this report from NASA's Johnson Space Center, home of Artemis 2 Mission Control, in Houston.

The Artemis 2 astronauts will get a rare skywatching treat on Monday (April 6).

The quartet will see a total solar eclipse that evening as they slingshot around the moon's far side, in a flyby that breaks humanity's all-time distance record.

And that eclipse will be something that none of us stuck on terra firma have ever seen. (And, to be clear, groundbound viewers won't see this one; it will be visible only to the Artemis 2 crew.)

"From our vantage point, the moon and the sun in the sky appear approximately the same size," NASA's Kelsey Young, Artemis science flight operations lead, said during a press conference on Saturday (April 4).

But Artemis 2's Orion capsule "has a much different view than we do," she added. "And so the moon appears much, much, much larger in their view than it does from us here on Earth."

As a result, the sun will disappear from Artemis 2's view for about 53 minutes on Monday — about seven times longer than the maximum period of totality possible for eclipses seen from Earth.

Artemis 2's total solar eclipse will begin Monday at about 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 GMT on April 7), 90 minutes after Orion reaches its maximum distance from Earth — 252,757 miles (406,773 kilometers), which is about 4,000 miles (6,400 km) farther than NASA's Apollo 13 mission got in April 1970.

Eclipses give solar scientists a rare chance to study the sun's wispy outer atmosphere, or corona, which is usually drowned out by the overwhelming glare of the solar disk. So NASA is pressing the Artemis 2 crew into sun-watching service on Monday evening.

"We've included prompts for them to describe the features that they can see in the solar corona, which can ultimately help solar scientists understand these processes in general, especially given the unique vantage point that the crew are going to have relative to our orbiting spacecraft here on Earth and our observers, our scientists, here on Earth as well," Young said.

Such work is part of a broader flyby observation campaign, during which the four Artemis 2 astronauts — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — train their sharp eyes on the moon.

And human eyes are special, Young said; they're capable of picking up nuances of shade and color that the cameras on robotic lunar orbiters can miss. She cited the example of the Apollo 17 astronauts, who noticed oddly orange regolith on the moon that eventually revealed "that volcanic processes were active on the lunar surface much more recently than we had expected before."

So the astronauts' up-close observations on Monday should be quite valuable.

"We're looking for the crew to take time during their flyby, let their eyes adjust to what they're seeing, and call out any of those subtle color nuances, especially on the parts of the far side that have never been seen before by human eyes," Young said. "And we're able to ask more intelligent questions because of what Apollo gave us and because of what those orbiting spacecraft provided to us."

Monday's skywatching event won't be unprecedented, by the way: The Apollo astronauts — who orbited the moon rather than flew by it, as Artemis 2 will do — also saw solar eclipses from lunar realms, Young said.

The eclipse campaign comes as something of an unexpected treat for the Artemis 2 astronauts, who had been targeting an early February launch. Minor issues with their Space Launch System rocket pushed things back a bit, however, into a window that allows them to see a celestial spectacle.

"That's something that we hadn't been thinking we were going to be able to do," Hansen said on Saturday, during an interview with Canadian media. "But because we launched on April 1 — the birthday of the Royal Canadian Air Force, I'll just add in there — we're going to get to see that now, which is pretty neat."

Monday's lunar flyby will send Artemis 2 back toward Earth. The astronauts will splash down on Friday (April 10) off the coast of San Diego, bringing their 10-day moon mission to an end.

On Christmas Eve 1968, the crew of NASA's Apollo 8 moon mission captured the "Earthrise" photograph, which is perhaps the most famous image ever taken from space. Soon, the astronauts of Artemis 2 will try to replicate it during their own flight around the moon.

Artemis 2 will perform its flyby around the moon's far side on Monday (April 6), more than 57 years after Apollo 8 became the first mission to take humans around the moon. During their lunar loop, the Artemis 2 astronauts will aim to recreate the Earthrise image, in the hope that the new photo can have the same unifying effect that the original did.

Earthrise was more than simply a photograph. Its depiction of Earth's blue marble rising in the distance above the barren lunar surface illustrated how fragile our world really is amidst the vastness of space, and how, despite our differences, all of us share one planet.

Taken three years into the United States' direct involvement in the Vietnam War, during an era in which environmental concerns were beginning to gain ground, Earthrise became the poster child for anti-war and pro-environment campaigners.

The photograph was unplanned and unexpected. Unlike Artemis 2, which will swing around the far side of the moon just once at an altitude that varies between about 4,000 and 6,000 miles (approximately 6,430 and 9,650 kilometers) without entering lunar orbit, the Apollo 8 spacecraft performed 10 orbits of the moon.

It was during the fourth orbit, as Apollo 8 emerged from the far side of the moon, that Lunar Module Pilot Bill Anders spotted something through the window.

"Oh my god, look at that picture over there!" he exclaimed, as recorded in the mission transcript. "There's Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!"

Indeed it was. Anders was armed with a Hasselblad camera with a 250mm telephoto lens. He raised it to take a snap.

"Hey, don't take that — it's not scheduled," joked Mission Commander Frank Borman beside Anders. Though Borman was joking, it did indicate how strictly scheduled everything they did on the mission was.

Anders realized he had a roll of black-and-white film in the camera. Quickly he asked Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell for the color film and, switching hatch windows to get a better view, took the photograph that became known as Earthrise.

Part of the beauty of the Earthrise photograph is that it was unplanned and unexpected — a perfect moment during humanity's most daring space mission up to that point, and at Christmas too.

The crew of Artemis 2 — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — could also get a chance to see their own Earthrise, and this time imaging it is most definitely on the schedule.

In fact, they won't just be going for Earthrise, but also "Earthset" — capturing Earth close to the lunar horizon just before it slips behind the limb of the moon as Artemis 2 begins its 45-minute journey around the far side. The astronauts will have just minutes, at best, to capture Earthrise and Earthset before our planet either gets too high in the sky or drops below the horizon, respectively.

Even if the crewmates are successful in capturing their images, Artemis 2's Earthrise (and Earthset) images won't look exactly like Apollo 8's. For one thing, Apollo 8 was just 60 miles (97 km) above the lunar surface when Anders took the photograph, while Artemis 2's Orion capsule, named Integrity, will be up to 100 times higher.

They'll also be using very different cameras. Apollo's Hasselblad cameras were state of the art at the time, but Artemis 2's digital Nikon D5 cameras have far greater functionality and control over settings to get the perfect shot.

Another key variable is how the surface of the moon will be illuminated at the time, which depends on exactly when Artemis 2 arrives at the moon. Anders took his image of Earthrise over a lunar surface bathed in sunlight, but that won't be the case for Artemis 2.

"Although the lunar far side will only be partially illuminated during the flyby, the conditions should create shadows that stretch across the surface, enhancing relief and revealing depth, ridges, slopes, and crater rims that are often difficult to detect under full illumination," NASA officials said in a statement on Thursday (April 2).

However, NASA has been thinking about this for a long time, and the Artemis 2 Visualization Lead, Ernie Wright of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, has produced artistic depictions of how Earthrise from Artemis 2 might appear under different lighting conditions. Given Integrity's high altitude, rather than looking like they are flying low over the surface as was the case with Apollo 8, the crew of Artemis 2 will see the moon appear about the same size as a basketball at arm's length, providing a truly unique viewpoint.

The original Earthrise image had such influence in part because of the circumstances on Earth at the time it was taken. Artemis 2 is also flying during a time of war and environmental danger, with tensions high across the globe. We can only hope that a new Earthrise image will provide a timely reminder that we all live together on a single fragile planet.

The parallels between the Artemis 2 and Apollo 8 moon missions now include a stirring holiday message.

As they circled the moon on Dec. 24, 1968, the three Apollo 8 astronauts read the first 10 verses of the Book of Genesis during a live TV broadcast that reached an estimated 25% of Earth's population.

Mission commander Frank Borman wrapped up the reading with these words: "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

On Saturday (April 4), as Artemis 2's Orion capsule sped toward the moon, a CBS News reporter asked mission pilot Victor Glover if he wished to share any Easter thoughts with those of us here on Earth.

"I don't have anything prepared. I'm glad you brought it up, though; I think these observances are important," Glover responded.

Then he gave us some words that showed how thoughtful and eloquent he is, and how well he can think on his feet.

"You guys are talking to us because we're in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe," Glover said. "Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special, but we're the same distance from you. And I'm trying to tell you — just trust me — you are special."

Glover invoked God and the Bible in his impromptu address, but he took pains to reach believers and non-believers alike

"In all of this emptiness — this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe — you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together," he said of Earth. "I think, as we go into Easter Sunday, thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we've gotta get through this together."

Apollo 8 and Artemis 2 are the first missions of their respective programs (Apollo and Artemis) to send people to the moon. (In fact, Apollo 8 was the first human spaceflight mission ever to go beyond Earth orbit.)

Like Apollo 8, Artemis 2 will not land on the lunar surface; rather, it will loop around the moon's far side, a milestone that will occur on Monday evening (April 6). That flyby will slingshot Artemis 2's Orion — which holds Glover, fellow NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen — back to Earth, where it will arrive on Friday (April 10).

On the same day that Apollo 8 delivered its Christmas Eve message, lunar module pilot Bill Anders snapped one of the most iconic photos ever taken — the famous "Earthrise" shot, which showed our gorgeous planet hanging over the moon's desolate gray dirt.

The Artemis 2 astronauts will try to recreate that photo during their lunar flyby on Monday. And hopefully the image will have similar effects to the original, which has been credited with helping to inspire the environmental movement and drawing all of us on this fractured world just a little closer together.

We now know how far the Artemis 2 astronauts will get from Earth — and that distance will be unprecedented.

The Artemis 2 crew — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — will travel a maximum of 252,757 miles (406,773 kilometers) from their home planet, NASA announced today (April 3).

The current human-distance record, set in April 1970 by the three astronauts of NASA's Apollo 13 mission, is 248,655 miles (400,171 km).

Artemis 2 will set the new mark on Monday (April 6), when its Orion capsule loops around the far side of the moon and starts heading back to Earth.

The mission was always expected to break Apollo 13's record. But the new distance estimate — which was revealed by Judd Freiling, the Artemis 2 ascent flight director, during a press briefing this afternoon — carries more weight than previous ones did.

That's because it was calculated after Orion's translunar injection (TLI) burn, a nearly six-minute-long maneuver that sent the capsule out of Earth orbit and on its way to the moon. Orion aced the TLI on Thursday evening (April 2), charting the course for the rest of the mission — and giving NASA some real numbers to crunch.

"The translunar injection burn is the last major engine firing of the mission," NASA officials wrote in the Artemis 2 press kit.

"It propels Orion on a path toward the moon and sets it on the free-return trajectory that will ultimately bring crew back to Earth for splashdown," they added. "Though only two days into the mission, it essentially doubles as Orion's deorbit burn as well."

As those words indicate, Artemis 2 will not land on the moon, or even enter lunar orbit. It was designed from the start as a flyby mission, which aims to show that Orion is capable of carrying astronauts to and from the moon. If all goes to plan, more ambitious Artemis flights will follow, including the program's first crewed lunar landing with Artemis 4 in late 2028.

Apollo 13, by contrast, was supposed to touch down on the moon. However, an oxygen-tank explosion 56 hours after launch scotched those plans and put the mission into survival mode.

And survive it did, thanks to the ingenuity and perseverance of the Apollo 13 astronauts — commander Jim Lovell, lunar module pilot Fred Haise and command module pilot Jack Swigert — and the folks in Mission Control. Lovell, Haise and Swigert made it back to Earth safely after swinging around the moon, etching their names into the history books for multiple reasons.

NASA is just hours away from launching Artemis 2, the first mission to ferry humans into the moon's vicinity in more than half a century.

The roughly 10-day flight — expected to lift off today (April 1) from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida at 6:24 p.m. EDT (2224 GMT) — will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen aboard the Orion spacecraft toward the moon. If all goes to plan, the crew will loop around the moon and return to Earth on a free-return trajectory, reaching roughly 4,700 miles (7,560 kilometers) beyond the moon's far side — farther than Apollo 8's historic lunar flyby and the most distant journey ever attempted by humans.

While Artemis 2 is a critical test of NASA's deep-space hardware, it is also a major science mission. The flight aims to collect data on radiation exposure, health and human performance beyond low Earth orbit, with several experiments turning the crew themselves into research subjects.

Here's a closer look at the science flying with Artemis 2, and how it could shape future lunar landings and, ultimately, crewed missions to Mars.

Bone marrow study targets astronaut health risks

Among the experiments aboard Artemis 2 is a small but sophisticated project known as AVATAR, short for "A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response." The experiment uses lab-grown tissue models — each about the size of a flash drive — that contain living human cells engineered to behave like real organs.

AVATAR is designed to focus on bone marrow tissue grown from cells obtained through preflight blood donations from the astronauts, according to NASA. Bone marrow produces blood and immune cells and is particularly sensitive to radiation, making it a key target for evaluating health risks during missions beyond Earth.

Once the mission concludes, researchers plan to analyze the tissue samples at the molecular level to assess how thousands of genes responded to spaceflight. To determine whether the organ chips can reliably predict human responses to space-related stress, scientists will compare the results with data from the International Space Station (ISS), as well as with biological samples collected from the crew before and after flight, according to NASA.

Previous research aboard the space station, which is partially shielded by Earth's magnetic field, has shown that astronauts experience bone loss even during shorter space stints, underscoring the greater risks anticipated during future deep-space travel. The findings could help guide more personalized healthcare strategies for astronauts on future long-duration missions, NASA said.

A deep-space stress test

Another key experiment is the Artemis Research for Crew Health and Readiness, or ARCHeR, that will examine how astronauts cope with life inside Orion's tight, studio-apartment-sized quarters.

Crew members will wear wrist-mounted devices that monitor stress levels, movement, sleep and cognitive performance. Researchers hope the real-time data will help them analyze how daily activity, rest and confinement affect health and teamwork in deep space, according to NASA.

Another investigation will focus on the immune system. During the mission, astronauts will collect saliva samples by blotting them onto special paper stored in small booklets, a simple method required because Orion lacks refrigeration, NASA said.

When compared with samples collected before and after the flight, the saliva and blood data will allow researchers to track immune changes linked to stressors such as radiation and isolation. Scientists also plan to monitor dormant viruses that can reactivate during spaceflight, including those related to chickenpox and shingles, a reaction that has been previously observed aboard the ISS.

Crew health monitoring is planned for months before launch and after landing, NASA said. Astronauts will undergo balance and movement tests, including simulated spacewalking tasks in a pressurized suit, to measure how the body adapts to long-duration spaceflight and how quickly it readjusts to Earth's gravity.

Measuring radiation

Unlike astronauts aboard the ISS, the Artemis 2 crew will travel beyond Earth's protective magnetosphere, where exposure to space radiation is significantly higher.

To monitor that risk, astronauts will carry personal radiation sensors, known as dosimeters, in their pockets to track exposure in real time. Together with six radiation sensors installed throughout the Orion crew module, these instruments can detect sudden increases in radiation, such as during a solar storm, and alert the crew to take protective action.

Data from these devices, along with measurements from several shoebox-sized cubesats provided by international partners, could help scientists better understand how radiation behaves inside Orion and how it affects human health experiments.

A rare view of the moon

No overview of Artemis 2 would be complete without the moon itself.

As Orion arcs around the moon's far side, the crew is expected to turn their attention outward, using a three-hour window behind the moon to study terrain no human has closely examined in more than 50 years. From Orion's vantage point, the moon will appear roughly the size of a basketball held at arm's length.

During a planned observation period over the far side, the hemisphere permanently turned away from Earth, astronauts will rely on their geology training to photograph and describe surface features shaped by ancient impacts and long-ago lava flows, NASA explains .

What the crew sees will depend on Orion's flight path and the angle of sunlight, but scientists say the astronauts could catch views of regions never before seen directly by human eyes.

Among the most compelling targets is the Orientale Basin, a massive, 3.8-billion-year-old impact scar roughly 600 miles (960 kilometers) wide that marks the boundary between the moon's near and far sides and remained hidden during the Apollo era.

Astronauts may also witness brief flashes from meteoroids striking the surface or faint clouds of dust hovering above the lunar horizon that are not very well understood, NASA says.

Those observations are expected to help guide upcoming Artemis missions, including plans to land astronauts near the moon's south pole. Data gathered from orbit could influence where future crews explore, what samples they collect and which regions hold the greatest scientific promise.

Europe's JUICE Jupiter probe swung by the moon for a "gravity assist" on Monday (Aug. 19), and it snapped some photos to commemorate the historic encounter.

JUICE (short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) came within a mere 465 miles (750 kilometers) of the lunar surface on Monday evening, on the first leg of an unprecedented gravity-assist doubleheader. The second leg comes on Tuesday evening, when the probe flies by Earth.

JUICE chronicled Monday's lunar encounter with some imagery, which it captured using its two onboard monitoring cameras (which were designed to confirm the deployment of the probe's solar arrays and scientific instruments). 

And the European Space Agency (ESA) shared these photos with the world as they came down to Earth, raw and unprocessed, via a live webcast that included commentary from some JUICE team members.

JUICE launched in April 2023, on a mission to study Jupiter and three of its four big Galilean moons — Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. All three are thought to possess oceans of liquid water beneath their icy shells, and Europa's is likely in contact with a rocky seafloor, making possible a variety of intriguing chemical reactions. (The seas of Ganymede and Callisto may be sandwiched between layers of ice.)

This week's moon and Earth flybys are historic; no other mission has ever performed a double gravity assist, according to ESA. The two maneuvers will set the probe on course for a similar encounter with Venus in August 2025, which will slingshot JUICE out toward the giant planet.

"Actually, this flyby is a braking maneuver, so we do not accelerate JUICE, in the sense of gaining speed relative to the sun," Ignacio Tanco, JUICE spacecraft operations manager, said during ESA's lunar flyby webcast. 

"What we found is that by following this sequence of first Earth and then Venus, we manage to save about half a year of cruise time and arrive to Jupiter around July 2031," Tanco added. "This sort of counterintuitive approach of braking first, in fact, results ultimately in the shortest possible cruise phase."

To achieve the same change in velocity achieved by this week's two flybys via engine burns, the JUICE team would've had to use pretty much all the propellant in the probe's tanks, Tanco said. 

JUICE team members say the assist worked perfectly. "It was a flawless maneuver! No fine-tuning or correction is needed before tonight's Earth flyby," ESA Operations posted to X on Aug. 20. 

During its Earth flyby on Tuesday, JUICE will come within a mere 4,250 miles (6,840 km) of Earth. If all goes according to plan, closest approach will occur at 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 GMT) over the North Pacific Ocean. 

Amateur astronomers could theoretically see the probe through a telescope during the encounter, JUICE team members said — provided they're in Alaska or some other spot in or around the North Pacific.

There won't be another flyby-photo webcast during Tuesday's flyby, however. ESA's Pacific region telemetry-receiving stations are all in the Southern Hemisphere, so the JUICE team won't be able to communicate with the probe during the encounter, team members said on Monday.

Editor's note: This story was updated on Aug. 20 to include processed images from JUICE's lunar flyby and to add a social media post from ESA's Operations team confirming the maneuver worked as intended.

NASA's new exoplanet-hunting spacecraft has been busy.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which launched last month on a mission to find alien worlds circling stars close to the sun, zoomed within about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) of the moon yesterday (May 17), NASA officials said.

This long-planned "gravity assist" maneuver was designed to help TESS reach its final science orbit, a long and looping path around Earth that no spacecraft has ever occupied before. [NASA's TESS Exoplanet-Hunting Mission in Pictures]

"This highly elliptical orbit will maximize the amount of sky the spacecraft can image, allowing it to continuously monitor large swaths of the sky," NASA officials wrote in a statement today (May 18).

TESS will perform one last engine burn on May 30 to reach this orbit, they added. The spacecraft is expected to begin its two-year science mission in mid-June, after wrapping up calibration and commissioning work with its four onboard cameras. 

Such work is already underway. TESS has snapped its first test image with one of those cameras, NASA officials announced today. The photo, which was taken on April 26, is centered on the southern constellation Centaurus and shows more than 200,000 stars. 

"The edge of the Coalsack Nebula is in the right upper corner, and the bright star Beta Centauri is visible at the lower left edge," NASA officials wrote in the same statement. "TESS is expected to cover more than 400 times as much sky as shown in this image with its four cameras during its initial two-year search for exoplanets. A science-quality image, also referred to as a 'first light' image, is expected to be released in June."

TESS will precisely monitor stars' brightness, looking for tiny dips that could be caused by alien planets crossing the stars' faces. This "transit method" is also employed by NASA's Kepler space telescope, which has discovered about 70 percent of the 3,700 known exoplanets to date.

TESS is expected to match or exceed Kepler's haul in total numbers, mission team members have said. And because TESS will focus on stars in the sun's neighborhood, astronomers will be able to study some of these newfound worlds in depth using other instruments.

For example, NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2020, should be able to probe the atmospheres of at least a few TESS planets, looking for water vapor, oxygen, methane and other gases that could be signs of a habitable (or possibly even inhabited) environment.

The cost of the TESS mission is capped at $200 million, though launch services added another $87 million to that total, NASA officials have said. TESS lifted off April 18 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.