'Swamp-like colors' on the moon: NASA report reveals strange sights from Artemis II mission

Quick facts What it is: A view of the moon from the Artemis II crew Where it is: Aristarchus Plateau, on the moon's near side When it was shared: Oct.

8, 2026 What color is the moon? Ask an Earthling, and you'll get a predictably monochromatic answer: white or gray.

But ask the four crewmembers of NASA's Artemis II mission — who spent nearly seven hours circling the moon from just 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) from the lunar surface this April — and you'll wonder if they're talking about the same dusty satellite we can see from Earth.

Yellow, brown, green, blue and tan features fan across vast volcanic plains and lurk at the edges of ominous craters, according to the crew's in-the-moment observations, which were shared this week in NASA's Artemis II Preliminary Lunar Science Report .

The 130-page document catalogs everything crewmembers Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen saw during their historic close flyby of the moon on April 6, drawing from 814 gigabytes of photo, video and audio recordings taken from the Orion crew capsule.

This rainbow of lunar color represents distinct geological features that could inform future missions on where to land and where to explore as the world's space agencies race to set up a permanent presence on the moon .

One spot that particularly enthralled the astronauts (and is featured in the image above) is the Aristarchus Plateau — a broad, elevated region on the northwestern edge of the moon's nearside.

The region hosts one of the moon's densest collections of ancient volcanic features, including swaths of dark lava deposits and colorful volcanic glasses.

Koch, mission specialist for Artemis II, was shocked to see distinct yellow shades in the region; she likened the plateau to "a yellow snow-capped mountain," with sunlight-reflecting craters providing the bright "snow." She went on to call the region "a jaundiced cheek of the Moon." "There are so many colors now," Glover, Artemis II's pilot, added while photographing the area.

"There's also a green.

I see brown, especially Aristarchus and north toward the north pole. … It kind of flows down from the north in brown streaks." According to the report authors, these colorful hues "could be associated with orange (titanium-rich) and green (magnesium-rich) glass beads respectively," similar to volcanic glass beads collected by the Apollo 15 and 17 missions on separate parts of the moon.

"Chaos across the entire area" Another colorful patch of the lunar surface that caught the crew's attention was Orientale Basin — a huge, young and multiringed impact crater that's about three times as wide as Massachusetts, according to NASA.