CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The Artemis II astronauts have captured our blue planet’s brilliant beauty as they zoom closer to the moon.

NASA released the crew’s first downlinked images Friday, 1 1/2 days into the first astronaut moonshot in more than half a century.

The first photo taken by commander Reid Wiseman, a Baltimore County native, shows a curved slice of Earth in one of the capsule’s windows. The second shows the entire globe, with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds. A green aurora even glows, according to NASA.

As of midmorning Friday, Wiseman and his crew were 100,000 miles from Earth and were gaining on the moon with another 160,000 miles to go. They should reach their destination Monday.

Wiseman, a long way from his hometown of Cockeysville, gave a shoutout from the spacecraft to the crew’s families. The crew commander has two daughters and his 83-year-old father watching at home, all of whom saw his launch in person on Wednesday evening.

Marylanders have been cheering Wiseman all week as the hometown hero began the historic journey. Baltimore County’s X account posted his 1993 yearbook photo from Dulaney High School, which had the caption “FUTURE PLANS: Fly high.”

The three Americans and one Canadian will swing around the moon in their Orion capsule, hang a U-turn and head straight back home without stopping. They fired Orion’s main engine Thursday night to set them on their course.

After Mission Control shifted the position of the capsule, the entire Earth, complete with northern lights, filled their windows.

“It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks,” Wiseman said in a TV interview.

They’re the first lunar travelers since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Banner reporter Sara Ruberg contributed to this story.