The Artemis II crew has been back on Earth for a little while now after their record-breaking journey around the Moon, traveling the greatest distance from Earth of all previous missions.
The team has already released quite a few well-edited photographs of the view of the Earth around the Moon, as well as the Moon's surface as they circled around it, but the video astronaut Reid Wiseman just shared might be the most impressive artifact we've seen from the trip so far.
While in space, Wiseman took out his iPhone to capture a glimpse of the Earth just barely peeking around the Moon in what is called an "Earthset" as they continued their journey.
Most notably, at the very beginning of the video, Wiseman's iPhone camera took a moment to adjust, and it captured the vastness of space and the stars beyond before focusing on the Earth, giving the impression of black, starless space around it.
Wiseman reflected on the moment:
"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 [Christina Koch] is hammering away on 3-shot brackets and capturing those exceptional Earthset photos through the 400mm lens. [Victor Glover] was in window three, watching with [Jeremy Hansen] next to him."
"I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window, but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view… this is uncropped, uncut with eight-times zoom, which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye. Enjoy."
You can watch Reid Wiseman's video here:
Viewers were impressed by the video, and not just the most zoomed-in "Earthset" part.
This is a great reminder—and not just for the Artemis II journey—that memories are not always made in the perfect, curated, and highly-edited photos and videos we post on Instagram.
Rather, the more touching moments are usually found in the candids, and in the moments before the camera lens adjusts to the Earth and takes in the vast darkness around the Earth and Moon, where viewers can really get a sense of the immensity of space.
