First photos of Earth from the Artemis II mission

The astronauts on the Artemis II mission were about 178,000 km from Earth at the time of this update. As the Artemis II astronauts travel farther from Earth, they take a moment to look back at home. On Friday morning, NASA shared a partial view of our bright blue planet taken by mission commander Reid Wiseman. Earth, shrouded in swirling clouds, appears through a window of the Orion capsule in which the crew will travel around the Moon. Another image released by the space agency shows Earth in its entirety, with green streaks of aurora visible in parts of its atmosphere. The Times: A selection of reading you won't find anywhere else, with tildes and accents. Get it sent to your inbox. "You look amazing, you look beautiful," said Victor Glover, the Artemis II pilot, in a video call with ABC News on Thursday night. Glover, the first Black astronaut to travel to outer space, emphasized the unifying power of seeing Earth from that distance. "No matter where you come from or what you look like, we are all one people," he said. The Artemis II crew also includes mission specialists Christina Koch, the first woman to travel around the Moon, and Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian astronaut to make the journey. NASA added two more images of Earth taken by the crew on Friday afternoon. One showed our planet with one side illuminated by the Sun and the other shrouded in the darkness of night. In a second image, our dark world was shown with a small crescent of light illuminating the underside. On Thursday, after testing several systems of the Orion spacecraft in Earth orbit, NASA assigned the capsule and crew that will travel around the Moon the spacecraft's final major engine burn. "With this burn on our way to the Moon, we are not leaving Earth," Koch said shortly before the maneuver. "We chose it." We are on the third day of the 10-day mission. The crew was scheduled to wake up in the afternoon on Earth and begin the day's activities, which include a demonstration of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in space and a test of the emergency communication systems. On day 6, the astronauts will orbit the far side of the Moon, becoming the first humans to visit it—from a distance—in more than half a century. On Friday, the crew will rehearse some of the scientific observations they will attempt during that phase of the mission. Then, gravity will pull them back home. On the final day of the mission, the astronauts are expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean. Katrina Miller is a science journalist for the Times and lives in Chicago. She earned a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago.