Artemis II's Reid Wiseman shot Earth's most striking space photo in 54 years using a 10-year-old Nikon D5, but how does it compare to 1972's iconic Blue Marble?
Not bad for a 10 year-old camera. But, as any photographer knows, getting in the right position is key.
This is already one of the most famous pictures ever taken and fully justifies the choice to take the 10 year-old Nikon D5 on the Artemis II mission. It was shot by Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman from one of the Orion spacecraft’s windows after completing the translunar injection burn on April 2, 2026.
It features not just one but two auroras (the Aurora Australis top right and the Aurora Borealis bottom left) on the rim of the sphere. Zodiacal light (bottom right) is also visible as the Earth eclipses the Sun.
The famous Blue Marble image was taken by the Apollo 17 crew on December 7 1972. An important distinction between the two photographs is the lighting: Blue Marble was taken in sunlight, that zodiacal light tells you that Hello World was lit by the Moon herself.
Hello World was taken using a Nikon D5 camera with a 14–24 mm f/2.8 lens at an aperture of f/4, an exposure time of 1/4 second, and an ISO setting of 51,200. According to its EXIF data, the exposure was set manually and the image was later processed using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic.
It was downlinked using the Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O), which is being trialled alongside NASA's existing Deep Space Network and uses lasers in the infrared spectrum to increase the bandwidth between deep space missions and Mission Control. The two O2O ground stations are in Las Cruces, New Mexico and Table Mountain, California, both chosen for minimal cloud cover.
So far over 100 GB of data has been transmitted via O2O which can top out at 260 Mbps, enough to stream 4K from lunar distances if required.
Blue Marble was taken with a Hasselblad 500EL camera and 80mm Zeiss lens at f/11 on 70 mm Kodak SO-368 Ektachrome film at 1/250. It is usually shown cropped, chromatically adjusted, and reoriented with the north of the planet towards the top of the frame. NASA and the Apollo 17 crew themselves credit all three astronauts with the picture, but it was likely taken by Harrison Schmitt.
This is what the original looks like.
At time of writing, Artemis II is still on its way to the Moon and the two onboard D5s (and one Nikon Z9 added late to the manifest) are being prepped for the upcoming six-hour lunar science observation period of its closest approach.
According to mission documents, the D5s will be shooting with 80-400mm and 14-24mm lenses. Visible far-side features will include several never before seen with unaided eyes, such as the full Orientale basin, Pierazzo crater, and the Ohm crater. There will also be both an Earthrise and Earthset, and a solar eclipse.
The video below shows the seven hour flyby in one minute, and highlights just how important it was that a camera with stellar low-light performance such as the D5 was chosen for the mission.