The most awe-inspiring photographs from NASA’s Artemis II mission so far

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More than half a century after humanity last ventured beyond low Earth orbit, NASA's Artemis II mission marks a long-awaited return to deep space - and it has now reached its midway point.

In just a matter of days, the mission has crossed some remarkable thresholds. Orion slipped behind the Moon, briefly lost contact with Earth for around 40 minutes as expected, and reached its maximum distance from our planet - 252,756 miles (406,771 km) - shattering the previous record for the farthest humans have ever travelled in space.

"It is so great to hear from Earth again," said mission specialist Christina Koch as she reestablished communication after the outage. "We will always choose Earth, we will always choose each other."

The Moon flyby represents a crucial step toward NASA's broader Artemis programme, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface and, for the first time, explore the Moon's south pole.

Commander Reid Wiseman described the journey as witnessing “sights that no human has ever seen,” while pilot Victor Glover admitted there were “no adjectives” to capture the experience.

Yet a photograph, as they say, speaks a thousand words - and the images from Artemis II do exactly that.

Transmitted across nearly a quarter of a million miles of space, the images have been nothing short of spectacular - awe-inducing views of Earth suspended in the darkness, rarely seen regions of the lunar surface, and intimate glimpses of the four astronauts going about daily life aboard Orion.

Here is a selection of the very best images captured from the mission so far.