NASA drops thousands more photos from historic Artemis II moon mission

• NASA released more than 12,000 new photos from the Artemis II mission around the moon.
• The images were captured by the four-person crew during their 10-day journey.
• The full collection is available to the public on NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth website.
• Artemis II was a test flight for future missions, including planned human moon landings starting in 2028.

While making a landmark journey around the moon and back, NASA's Artemis II crew couldn't resist taking a ton of photos to document the trip.

Haven't gotten your fill of images and video from the historic mission?

You're in luck, because NASA just dropped thousands of photos – many never-before-seen – captured throughout a captivating spaceflight that began April 1 with a launch in Florida and ended April 10 with a water landing near California.

Plenty of photos have already extensively circulated from the Artemis II mission, which marked humanity's first crewed venture near the vicinity of the moon in more than half a century. The latest photo dump, though, includes more than 12,000 snapshots captured by NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

Here's how you can see the U.S. space agency's new massive batch of Artemis II photos, as well as a gallery with 15 of the best.

NASA releases 12,000 new Artemis II mission photos

NASA and the Artemis II astronauts were able to share some photos of the lunar journey along the way. But since the crew has been back on Earth with all their equipment, the astronauts and NASA teams have been doing the meticulous work of combing through all the images they gathered while in space.

Now, NASA is sharing that gigantic treasure trove of imagery with the public via its Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth website.

The images span the entirety of their time on their way to and back from the moon, including during the lunar flyby April 6 when they came no closer than about 4,067 miles above the surface.

You can peruse the complete collection of 12,217 photos at this link. Note that it will take some time to load.

Here are some of the best new Artemis photos

What was the Artemis II mission?

As the astronauts selected for the Artemis II mission, Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen boarded NASA's Orion space capsule for a 10-day journey around the moon.

The Orion spacecraft hitched a ride April 1 atop NASA's 322-foot Space Launch System rocket launching from the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral. During the mission, the Orion vehicle carried the four-person crew farther from Earth than any humans have ever traveled while treating the astronauts to sights of the far side of the moon never before seen in person.

The mission came to an end April 10 with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

When will NASA astronauts return to the moon?

Artemis II primarily served as a test flight to ensure systems and hardware are working as intended before NASA attempts a series of human moon landings in the years ahead.

Up next, a new crew of Artemis III astronauts are due in 2027 to dock in Earth orbit with one or both commercial lunar landers being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin. That mission would also be a critical test flight ahead of Artemis IV in 2028, which would be the first time humans have stepped foot on the moon since NASA's last Apollo mission in 1972.

Under its Artemis campaign, NASA plans to use a series of both uncrewed and human moon landings to construct a $20 billion moon base near the lunar south pole were astronauts can live and work indefinitely. The missions would prepare for future ventures deeper into the solar system, including the first human expeditions to Mars.

Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at [email protected]. Subscribe to the free Florida TODAY newsletter.