Christina Koch posed for a striking selfie inside the Orion spacecraft while the mission team were roughly halfway to the moon during their 10 day lunar flight.
The photograph shows Koch smiling beside the zero gravity indicator known as Rise, visible through an illuminated Orion viewport as the service module sat in bright sunlight.
NASA said the image came from a modified GoPro camera mounted on the end of a seven meter long solar panel that supplies power to Orion.
The photo was taken on flight day four of the mission and it highlights both the crew and the hardware that sustain the spacecraft during the lunar flyby.
The Artemis 2 crew of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen posed together earlier at Kennedy Space Center and now will complete the mission with a return to Earth and a splashdown off the coast of San Diego.
Zero Gravity Mascot And Mission Details
NASA held an open competition to select the Artemis 2 zero gravity indicator, receiving more than 2,600 entries from over 50 countries, as reported by the agency.
The winning design came from a third grader in California named Lucas Ye and the mascot draws inspiration from an iconic Apollo era photograph, according to NASA.
The Rise mascot features a smiling moon like head and an Earth themed cap, and NASA placed a tiny SD card inside carrying the names of 5,647,889 people who applied for an Artemis 2 boarding pass.
The presence of the mascot served both as a mission mascot and as a simple way for astronauts to confirm they had reached microgravity, a traditional practice on crewed spaceflights.
The crew will end their 10 day odyssey with atmospheric re entry that includes a fiery descent before splashing down, completing the mission phase that test flies Orion and supports NASA plans for a sustained lunar presence.
