- It wasn't until 1946 that humans first saw what the Earth looked like from space.
- These iconic images of our planet now include "Blue Marble," "Pale Blue Dot," and "Earthrise."
- The farthest is from the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which captured Earth from 3.7 billion miles away.
The first photo of Earth from space, taken just 65 miles above our planet
On October 24, 1946, 11 years before the launch of Sputnik I, a 35-mm motion picture camera onboard a V-2 rocket captured a grainy black and white photo of Earth. It's the first image of our planet from space.
The image was taken at an altitude of 65 miles, just above the Karman Line, which is the boundary between the atmosphere and outer space.
No astronauts were onboard the rocket — the camera automatically took a picture every 1.5 seconds. The film miraculously survived the missile's planned crash landing.
The first television picture from space, taken 450 miles above Earth
On April 1, 1960, the Television and InfraRed Observation Satellite or TIROS-1 — the world's first successful weather satellite — sent the very first TV picture of the Earth from space. The image revealed a fuzzy picture of our Earthly abode's thick bands and clusters of clouds.
The 'Blue Marble,' taken 18,000 miles away from Earth
The "Blue Marble" is an image of Earth taken on December 7, 1972 as the Apollo 17 crew made its way to the moon. It's a detailed image of our planet, against the inky black void of space. Africa and Madagascar can be seen in the frame, along with the Arabian Peninsula and Antarctica.
It prompted astronauts to experience the "overview effect," which NASA describes as: "the impact of looking down at the Earth from above, and how it can create a shift in the way astronauts view and think about our planet and life itself."
The 'Earthrise' as the Earth peeks over the moon, taken 175,000 miles away from the planet's surface
On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts witnessed an "Earthrise" as our planet peeked over the rugged lunar surface.
"We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth," Astronaut Bill Anders, who took the photograph, famously said, according to NASA.
Orion takes a snapshot of Earth and the moon from 268,563 miles away
On November 28, NASA shared a photo the Artemis I spacecraft took that shows both Earth and the Moon in the background. Orion took the snapshot around its maximum distance from Earth of 268,563 miles.
Artemis I is the first mission in NASA's program to land astronauts on the moon and eventually Mars.
Earth, as seen from the dark side of Saturn, 898 million miles away
The Cassini spacecraft took a picture of Earth from the dark side of Saturn on July 19, 2013. The image is called "The Day the Earth Smiled" because of a campaign to have Earthlings smile into the void in unison.
"This could be a day, I thought, when all the inhabitants of Earth, in unison, could issue a full-throated, cosmic shout-out and smile a big one for the cameras from far, far away," Carolyn Porco, the leader of the Cassini imaging team who conceived of the photo shoot, wrote in June 2013.
An iconic image of our 'Pale blue dot,' taken 3.7 billion miles away
The Voyager 1 spacecraft captured the "Pale Blue Dot" image from almost 4 billion miles away on February 14, 1990.
It's an iconic image of Earth within a scattered ray of sunlight, and it's the farthest view of Earth ever taken by a spacecraft.
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us," astronomer Carl Sagan famously said.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o8HSoqWeq6Oeu7S1w56pZ5ufonyuu9KtZKKbn6O2pHnPoaatp6NivKd5xJqpraBdm7%2BwuYysp5qblWKvrcHEZqSaqpKhsm6xwKuroaqZqLI%3D