The Artemis II crew lifted off at 6:35 p.m. ET on Wednesday, April 1.

HOUSTON, Texas — As the four Artemis II astronauts approached a high point of their lunar mission — getting slung around the far side of the Moon — National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) staffers crowded into Houston’s famed mission control room for a team photo on Monday.

The findings were published March 20 in the journal AGU Advances and were based on data recorded by Juno in 2021 and 2022, after NASA granted an extension to the spacecraft’s operations upon completing a five-year science campaign at Jupiter.

Our breakdown of 7 hidden science lessons in the stunning photo taken by an astronaut on the Artemis II mission.

The Artemis II crew got the green light to bring iPhone 17s aboard the spacecraft months ago and had them in hand during their pre-flight quarantine. Smartphones have left Earth's orbit before, including on the 2021 Inspiration4 SpaceX flight and the last mission of the American Space Shuttle program.

N o mission to the Moon would be complete without its own conspiracy theories. You can spend billions of dollars sending humans hundreds of thousands of miles across space and take all the photos and make all the scientific observations you like, but a small community of people will still cry "FAKE!"

NASA's Artemis 2 mission brought astronauts to the moon on Monday (April 6), and the implications are far-reaching both scientifically and emotionally.

The Artemis II astronauts witnessed a solar eclipse from space during their historic flyby over the moon, a sight few have seen in person.