Artemis II's preliminary lunar report is out, and the colors surprised everyone
The Artemis II crew flew within 7,600 miles of the lunar surface in November 2024 and came back describing colors that don't match the gray rock of every Apollo photograph: 'jaundiced yellow' and 'swampy green.' NASA has now published the preliminary lunar science report, drawing on crew photographs, spoken observations, drawings, and annotations. Two outlets covered it. That's the whole picture available here, and it's thin.
NASA Artemis II mission crew reports strange 'swamp-like colors' on the moon
2 sources · hover a dot to see coverage
What happened
In November 2024, the four-person Artemis II crew completed a crewed lunar flyby, the first since Apollo 17 in 1972, passing within approximately 7,600 miles of the moon's surface without landing. During the flyby, crew members recorded observations through multiple methods: photographs, real-time spoken notes, sketches, and annotated images. NASA has now released the preliminary lunar science report from that mission, making the full record available to researchers and the public. Among the crew's reported observations were unexpected color variations on the lunar surface, described in the report as 'jaundiced yellow' and 'swampy green,' which diverge from the monochrome gray that characterizes most prior lunar imagery. The report represents the first crewed observational science dataset from a lunar proximity mission in more than five decades. Two outlets have covered the release.
Universe Today covered the report itself; Live Science covered the colors
Universe Today treated the NASA release as the news, focusing on the scientific record the crew produced and its availability to the research community. Live Science led with the sensory surprise, quoting the 'jaundiced yellow' and 'swampy green' descriptions and framing the story around visual anomaly. Neither outlet explained what causes the color variation, whether it correlates with known mineralogy such as olivine or pyroclastic deposits, or what the science community is expected to do with the observational dataset now that it's public.
What one side told you that the other didn't
Neither outlet explained what the colors actually mean scientifically.
Both Live Science and Universe Today reported the color descriptions as observations without grounding them in lunar geology. The moon does contain minerals that produce non-gray surface colors: olivine produces greenish tints, iron-rich volcanic glass produces orange and yellow hues famously documented at Shorty Crater by Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt. Neither outlet connected the Artemis II crew's descriptions to that prior record. The reader gets the surprise but not the science.
The report is public. Nobody linked to it directly.
Universe Today noted the preliminary lunar science report is 'available to the science community and the public,' and Live Science referenced it as a 'new report.' Neither outlet linked directly to the NASA document or named where it can be found. For a story whose entire news value is a primary source becoming publicly available, that's the one thing both pieces needed to do.
What to watch
NASA's full Artemis II science report, as opposed to this preliminary release, will follow after data analysis is complete. If the color observations are tied to specific surface coordinates and matched against orbital spectroscopy data from LRO or Kaguya, that would either confirm or complicate the crew's descriptions. Watch for a peer-reviewed follow-up in the next 12 months; that's when coverage will either deepen or disappear entirely.
See how outlets across the political spectrum framed this differently — and what each side left out.