Artemis II mission: NASA shares first images of Earth by astronauts aboard

Trash conference. We'll just be here standing by. The mission continues to perform well overall and the crew is in great spirits. Currently, the crew is more than 100,000 miles from the Earth and about 150,000 miles to go away from the moon. You know, Victor said that we call amazing things that humans do moon shots for a reason. And indeed, this is literally and symbolically our moon shot that we are in the middle of. You know, it's great to get some very clear video and images of the crew yesterday and the crew configured their cameras aboard Integrity and we have some of the latest images to share with you. If you, if you might or may not know that we have iPhones on board for the crew members and they're able not only the the Nikon D fives and the Z nines that we have on board that we preloaded already, they were able to also take some iPhones as well. That's what Lakisha is referring to. And so they'll get some great images from from all those cameras. Every one of them are going to be taking pictures and I'm sure once we get you know, are able to downlink all of the pictures, I think you will see a suite of pictures from all of the crew members. We also continued some Opcom passes, so the optical com antenna that we have on board to downlink high rate images. We were able to do that overnight. This morning when the crew woke up, they had their normal planning conferences and then they were able to do their family conferences. So they were to talk to their family. The whole point is to go back to the moon. The whole point of this mission is a campaign to get back to the moon. And the the being able to see with human eyes the lunar surface is a huge milestone, right? And, and that just articulates the point, you know, that we're going back to the moon, we're going to stay there, right? And so this is this is the first step towards that. We'll obviously build upon that. We'll get eyes on the moon, kind of map it out and then continue to to to go back and and enforce, you know, we're building a transportation system and to have a reliable and robust transportation system, you need to test flight the transportation system. And I think that's really important. We've demonstrated on Artemis one with uncrewed capability, we've added a very important aspect of it, which is the crude capability. And that crew capability enables us to really understand how when we have people in the cabin, how the systems operate and adjustments we need to make. You hear a lot of these kinds of things that over the loop, you know, minor adjustments we need to do. Certainly engineering expertise and, and the design we put in has a certain understanding. But until you put people in the mix and you operate it and really understand what you need to do to operate in this kind of environment, you don't get that until you're in that environment. So I think that's really important. Part of what we're doing is the technical aspects and what we are learning from taking ourselves around the moon. The other part obviously is what you talked about, which is capturing the imagination of people, right? And we have far more engagement than we had hoped to have. And we hope that it will increase as we continue to take further and further steps into into this mission. Booster, ignition and lift off the crew of Artemis 2, now bound for the moon. Humanity 's next great voyage begins. Good. Roll pitch. Roger Roll Pitch Houston now controlling the flight of Integrity on the Artemis 2 mission around the moon. The Integrity AMT high AMT high on time, passing 30 seconds into the flights. Integrity passes the alternate bego target milestone. Mission Control Houston seeing good performance of the warming engines. Space Launch System core stage Integrity 3 miles and altitude travelling more than 1200 mph. So today, April 1st, 2026, 6:35 PM NASA Space Launch System rocket lifted off the pad with 8.8 million pounds of thrust, carrying the Orion spacecraft, the Artemis 2 crew out to Earth orbit and beginning America 's grand return to the Moon. Now, about 51 minutes into the flight, during a planned handover between satellites, the Orion spacecraft underwent a communications issue, leading to a temporary partial loss of comms. The uplink from Capcom to the crew was being heard by the crew, but we cannot hear the responses. For a brief period of time, there were no issues with the vehicle itself. Comes with the crew have been restored more actively working the issue and we'll keep you informed. The Orion spacecraft has successfully separated from the core stage and its solar rays have been deployed as planned. Soon the crew will execute the apogee rays burn, placing the spacecraft into a stable high Earth orbit. As we prepare for the Translunar injection and the journey into Sislin or space, NASA astronauts Commander Reed Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen are safe, they're secure and they're in great spirits. We will continue to monitor their health and the status as they as we move into the next phase of the Artemis 2 mission. So after a brief 54 year intermission, NASA is back in the business of sending astronauts to the moon. We have arrived at this point through a sustained effort and national commitment and the work of thousands across the agency, our industry partners and our international allies. I want to personally thank the ground crews, pad controllers, the entire workforce here at Kennedy Space Center. This mission belongs as much to you as it does to the crew. The crew is now in the capable hands of Mission Control Houston, the Johnson Space Center, where teams will guide Orion through each phase of the mission with the same discipline and precision that has brought us to this moment. We have certainly been here before. We know the challenges ahead. We have a lot of checkouts to get through before TLI and when fall goes well, everything is go. Artemis 2 will be moon bound. You have our commitment to keep the public as informed as possible on this historic mission and we will celebrate when this crew. We will hold our celebration until this crew is under parachutes and splashes down off the West Coast United States, congratulating the team at NASA and our brave astronauts on the successful launch of Artemis 2. It was quite something. It will be traveling further than any manned rocket has ever flown and will very substantially pass the moon, go around it and come back home from a distance that has never been done before. It's amazing. They are on the way and God bless them. These are brave people. We want to God blessed us for unbelievable astronauts.