The crew of Artemis II captured an “absolutely stunning” photo of the moon eclipsing the sun, according to NASA’s chief, as the spacecraft broke Apollo 13’s 56-year-old record for the longest distance traveled by humans from Earth.
“This is not AI,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday.
“This is why we do what we do,” Isaacman said, as Artemis II headed back home to Earth.
The White House on Monday posted the photo taken by Artemis II, and NASA released other photos from the Orion capsule, which made a six-hour flight to the moon with four astronauts on board.
Artemis II View of the Moon’s eclipse of the Sun.
NASA
Isaacman said, “I saw the photos about five minutes before I got to do this interview, and I’ll just say they looked absolutely stunning.”
The Artemis crew “mentioned during the webcast last night that they don’t know if human eyes are ready to see what they captured,” he said.
In this screengrab taken from a livestream video on April 6, 2026, a view of the Moon as the Artemis II mission’s Orion spacecraft reaches its farthest distance from Earth.
NASA via reuters
“I stopped when I saw it,” Isaacman said. “That’s why we send more fathers of astronauts to space than ever before.”
“That’s why we bring them back home and learn and continue what, I think, is the greatest adventure in human history,” he said.
“What you can see with the naked eye from the moon right now is blowing my mind,” Artemis II astronaut Jeremy Hansen radioed the spacecraft on Monday.
“It’s absolutely unbelievable,” said Canadian Hansen, according to a report by the Associated Press.
The AP reported that three other crew members are Americans, including Commander Reed Wiseman, who cried on Monday when Hansen asked the crew for permission to name a fresh lunar crater after Wiseman’s late wife, who died of cancer in 2020.
Artemis is the first NASA spacecraft to fly by the Moon since the Apollo 17 Moon landing in December 1972.
“You have made history and made all of America truly proud,” President Donald Trump told the crew during a call on Monday.
NASA plans to launch Artemis III in 2027 to practice docking lunar landers.
NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch looks out one of the Orion spacecraft’s main cabin windows toward Earth as the crew travels toward the moon on April 2, 2026.
NASA via reuters
The space agency aims to land two astronauts on the moon’s south pole with the Artemis IV mission in 2028.
“In a matter of months, in fact, by early 2027, we will begin landing unmanned robotic missions on an almost monthly cadence to the moon’s south pole and actually begin construction of a moon base,” Isaacman said Tuesday.