NASA announced on October 7, 2026, the first public delivery of Artemis II lunar-science data: more than 800 GB of records from the crew’s lunar flyby. The Planetary Data System (PDS), NASA’s distributed planetary archive, provides access to the collection. NASA’s release notice and the Artemis II PDS archive describe the delivery and its contents.
What the first delivery contains
NASA counts more than 11,000 full-resolution images and video together, along with 8.5 hours of audio recordings of crew lunar-science observations. The PDS archive also lists transcripts, crew annotations, mission documents and environmental readings from Orion’s storage lockers.
The imagery comes from crew handheld Nikon D5 and Nikon Z9 cameras as well as Orion cameras mounted on its solar-array wings and inside the spacecraft, including cabin, optical-navigation and docking cameras. Two Onset HOBO MX1101 loggers recorded temperature, relative humidity and dew point in the storage lockers. The PDS archive organizes these records into separate bundles across its nodes.
NASA’s lunar-science imagery includes cratered terrain along the boundary between sunlight and deep shadow, known as the terminator. At that boundary, low-angle sunlight casts long shadows across the surface.
Where to access the Artemis II archive
NASA’s Artemis II page in the Planetary Data System links to the separate data bundles, search tools and a data user guide. NASA also identified three related publications: a preliminary lunar-science report, a lunar-science operations report and the user guide.
The PDS described the October 7 posting as a first delivery. Its notice said the SPICE bundle was delayed and expected later.
Five faint flashes in NASA’s preliminary account
NASA’s preliminary science summary records five faint flashes reported by the crew during lunar observations on April 6, 2026. The science team considered other explanations, including cosmic rays and reflections from the spacecraft, before confirming the sightings. NASA describes the account as preliminary, with observations and interpretations subject to further study. The science summary gives NASA’s account of the observations.
A NASA mission recording preserves an exchange between Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen as they describe a flash and compare what they observed. NeoTeo covered the preliminary findings in an earlier report on the Artemis II lunar flashes.
