The Artemis 2 astronauts have passed the halfway point between Earth and the moon on Saturday as they sped toward a planned lunar flyby, with NASA releasing initial images of Earth taken from inside the Orion spacecraft.

We’re getting closer and closer to finding a real Earth-like exoplanet. But finding one is only half the battle. To truly know if we’re looking at an Earth analog somewhere else in the galaxy, we have to directly image it too. That’s a job for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a planned space-based telescope whose primary job is to do precisely that. But even capturing a picture and a planet and getting spectral readings of its atmospheric chemistry still isn’t enough, according to a new paper available on the arXiv preprint server by Kaz Gary of Ohio State and their co-authors. HWO will need to figure out how much a planet weighs first.

The Artemis II astronauts have captured our blue planet’s brilliant beauty as they zoom ever closer to the moon.

This month’s NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month offers us a two-for-one on brand new stars—with some potential planets thrown in as well. This visual highlights Webb’s views of the protoplanetary disks Tau 042021 (left) and Oph 163131 (right), otherwise known by the catalog numbers 2MASS J04202144+2813491 and 2MASS J16313124-2426281, respectively. Tau 042021 is situated around 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, while Oph 163131 lies about 480 light-years away in Ophiuchus.