Artemis II commander shares a remarkable video of Earth vanishing behind the Moon

We’ve seen some astonishing photos of an Earthset — the Earth setting behind the Moon — from the Artemis II crew’s history-making trip around our planet’s closest neighbor. Now, Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander, has shared a remarkable video of that same phenomenon.

While mission specialist Christina Koch was using a Nikon camera to snap stunning still images of the Earthset, Wiseman used an iPhone 17 Pro Max to film the moment. “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 8x zoom which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye,” he wrote on X.

This was the first time that human eyes had witnessed an Earthset in 54 years since the Apollo 17 mission. The Artemis II crew flew more than 5,000 miles beyond the Moon as they travelled more than a quarter of a million miles away from Earth — the furthest any humans have ever been from terra firma.

Advertisement Advertisement

I, like many people, overuse the word “awesome.” It should only really be used when something actually inspires awe. This video absolutely meets that mark. It’s genuinely awesome.