He Shot This Photo of Earth from 100,000 Miles Away

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman took this photo through one of Orion’s windows as the crew headed toward the Moon. He shot it handheld on a Nikon D5, a pro DSLR from 2016, using a 14-24mm lens at 22mm, f/4, 1/4 second, ISO 51,200. All manual. In zero gravity.

Wiseman is commanding Artemis 2, the first crewed mission beyond low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. His crew: Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. Koch is the first woman to fly on a lunar mission. Glover is the first Black astronaut to reach the Moon. Hansen is the first Canadian.

This is a flyby, not a landing. The crew will loop around the Moon on a figure-eight trajectory and return to Earth in roughly 10 days, traveling an expected 252,799 miles from Earth. That would break the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

The last humans to fly this far were the Apollo 13 crew. The last to actually reach the Moon were Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ronald Evans on Apollo 17. Cernan died in 2017.

The last time a human pointed a camera at Earth from deep space was December 1972. Harrison Schmitt took the famous “Blue Marble” on Apollo 17 on the way to the Moon. It became one of the most reproduced photographs in history.

Before that, William Anders on Apollo 8 in December 1968 snapped the photo now called “Earthrise” — Earth rising above the lunar surface, every human alive visible in a single frame. It is credited with sparking the modern environmental movement. The lineage: Earthrise (1968). Blue Marble (1972). Wiseman’s shots (2026). Three photographers. 58 years between the first and the last. t

There is one detail that makes these new photos genuinely different from all of those. It is the first time astronauts on a lunar mission have photographed Earth while other humans are also in space. The ISS crew is still orbiting below them. Every previous whole-Earth photo from deep space showed a planet where every living human was on the surface. This one doesn’t.

The mission’s purpose is to stress-test the Orion spacecraft and SLS rocket with a crew aboard before landing missions begin. The crew also carries a Nikon Z9 mirrorless for evaluation. That camera becomes the standard kit for Artemis 3, when astronauts will walk on the surface. Artemis 3 will put the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.

As of this morning, the crew is more than 100,000 miles from Earth with another 160,000 miles to go.