Artemis II astronauts nearly halfway to the moon as NASA shares stunning photos from Orion spacecraft

The four astronauts on the Artemis II mission are nearly halfway to the moon since launching on Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center.

"Since [Thursday’s] trans-lunar injection burn to send the crew around the moon, the mission continues to perform well overall, and the crew is in great spirits," Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA’s exploration systems said in a news conference on Friday.

"Currently, the crew is more than 100,000 miles from Earth and about 150,000 miles to go away from the moon.

"We call amazing things that humans do moonshots for a reason, and indeed, this is literally and symbolically our moonshot that we are in the middle of."

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Hawkins also shared two photos taken by astronaut Cmdr. Reid Wiseman from the Orion spacecraft.

The first image, Hawkins said, shows a "backlit Earth revealing auroras as the crew heads toward the moon."

She said it was taken by astronaut Wiseman out of a window on the Orion spacecraft, and it features two auroras and zodiacal light "at the bottom right. It’s visible as the Earth eclipses to sun."

"It’s great to think — with the exception of our four friends — all of us are represented in this image," Hawkins said.

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A second photo taken by Wiseman after the trans-lunar injection burn, which propels a spacecraft out of the Earth’s orbit, on Thursday shows the terminator line, separating day from night on Earth.

"So, we continue to learn about our spacecraft as we operate it in deep space with crew for the first time and it’s important to remind ourselves of that as we learn a little bit more day-by-day," Hawkins said.

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Artemis II Ascent Flight Director Judd Frieling said after the translunar injection burn on Thursday that the crew did an inspection of their windows, had planned medical conferences, and while they were asleep, the ground crew checked to see how the spacecraft was functioning.

And after the astronauts woke up Friday morning, they were able to talk to their families.

"We had planned a trajectory correction burn," Frieling said. "The systems are doing so well now — navigation and propulsion systems together — that that was not needed. So, we’ll roll that into the next planned correction trajectory burn tomorrow."

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Howard Hu, Orion’s program manager, said that the subsystems on the spacecraft continue to perform well, the air revitalization system is "doing very well" and the propellant usage was within 5% of their predicated usage limits.

He said they are working through one pressurization issue that relates to helium that pressurizes propellant tanks that push out the oxidizer and the fuel to make some of the major burns.

Hu said one branch had to be isolated, but it’s redundant and has no impact on the mission.

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"We’re able to do the rest of the burns across the mission without doing any regulation, what we call blowdown mode," he said. "In other words, there’s enough helium pressure in the tanks in the oxidizer itself that we can push out the fuel without needing to regulate or require more helium from the helium tanks."

Hu also showed a photo of part of the Earth seen through a window on the spacecraft, which he said was also taken by Wiseman.

"It just brings a lot of great emotion to me to see that picture being taken," Hu said.

Hu showed another photo of the crew, joking that Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen looked like he wasn’t "working that hard, so I’m going to have to check to make sure if he’s doing anything more than lying there on the side here, but great to see the crew. Great to see their smiling faces and hear them talk about their experiences so far."

Also on board the Orion capsule for the 10-day mission to fly around the moon is NASA Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialist Christina Koch.