The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shared side-by-side pictures showing how our home planet Earth was captured on camera from space in 1972 by the crew of first Moon mission 'Apollo 17' and the second Moon mission ‘Artemis II’ in 2026.

In an X post, the space agency shared images captured by the 1972 Apollo 17 crew and the 2026 Artemis II astronauts.

More than 50 years after Apollo 17, a new era begins with deeper spaceflight, a diverse crew, and long-term Moon goals.

NASA's latest photos from the Artemis II mission show Earth in stunning details as the astronauts near a milestone distance of 100,000 miles away.

The windows on the Orion spacecraft are already dirty. The four astronauts aboard Artemis II spend so much time pressing their faces against the glass to stare back at their home planet that mission commander Reid Wiseman actually radioed Houston to ask for window-cleaning procedures.

NASA's Artemis II mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 6:35 p.m. Eastern Wednesday. The mission aims to send four astronauts around the moon on a roughly 10-day journey.

Wiseman, Hansen, pilot Victor Glover and Christina Koch were on track to pass as close as 4,070 miles (6,550 kilometers) to the moon, as their Orion capsule whips past it, hangs a U-turn and then heads back toward Earth. It will take them four days to get back, with a splashdown in the Pacific concluding their test flight on Friday.

Many things have changed since the 1960s. At 13:24:59 Central Standard Time on December 19 1972, the Apollo 17 command module splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, about 350 nautical miles south-east of Samoa, concluding the last mission to the Moon.

Four astronauts boarded the Orion spacecraft on April 1 and lifted off that evening from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as part of Artemis 2, NASA’s first manned lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.

With the Artemis II launch ready for blast off on Wednesday, the US is looking to make its triumphant return around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

The Artemis II cannot land on the moon due to the spacecraft having no landing capabilities, according to Space.com. That goal is being saved for the eventual Artemis 4 mission. The specific objective of the Artemis II mission is to check out Orion’s systems and learn how to live and work on another world in preparation for human missions to Mars.