Astronaut Reid Wiseman captures breathtaking ‘Earthset’ using his iPhone during Artemis II mission. Watch

Wiseman compared the moment to a familiar experience in an entirely unfamiliar setting. “Like watching a sunset at the beach, but from the most unfamiliar seat in the universe,” he wrote on X. The event occurred when the spacecraft reached its farthest distance from Earth – around 252,756 miles – marking a new record for human spaceflight.

Reflecting on the experience, Wiseman added, “Only one chance in this lifetime… Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset.”

He further noted the challenge of capturing the view and wrote, “I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window, but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view… this is uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye. Enjoy.”

Watch here:

Only one chance in this lifetime…

Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset. You can hear the shutter on the Nikon as @Astro_Christina is hammering away on 3-shot brackets and capturing those… pic.twitter.com/8aWnaFJ69c

— Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid) April 19, 2026

The video has since gone viral, amassing over six million views and a deluge of reactions on social media. “Thank you for grabbing your phone and sharing this raw. Makes it feel so much more real than the pro camera shots. What a time to be alive,” a user wrote. “Quite possibly the most incredible video ever captured by a phone. Bravo,” another user commented.

“This is a video of earth setting behind the moon taken on a cellphone by an actual human… what an incredible time to be alive. Can you imagine showing this video to someone born anytime before like 1920,” a third user reacted.