The commander of the Artemis II mission, Reid Wiseman, shared an impressive video where it is possible to see the Earth “disappearing” behind the Moon, in a phenomenon known as “Earthset”.
The images were captured with his personal cell phone during the mission and show a rare perspective of our planet, seen from deep space. He himself described the moment as “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, comparing it to watching a sunset, but from the most distant point in the cosmos.
In the video, you can still hear the sound of the camera as Christina Koch took photos of the same moment with professional equipment. Also on board were Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen, who watched the moment from another window on the ship.
Wiseman explained that the recording was made with an iPhone 17 Pro Max, with 8x zoom, and guaranteed that the image was not edited in any way, being very close to what the human eye can observe in that situation.
Only one chance in this lifetime…
Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset. You can hear the shutter on the Nikon as is hammering away on 3-shot brackets and capturing those…
— Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid)
The Artemis II mission departed April 1 from Florida and took the crew on a roughly 10-day trip, during which they circled the Moon completely before returning to Earth.
NASA already has plans for future missions as part of the Artemis program, with the ultimate goal of returning astronauts to the lunar surface in the coming years.
