25 photos that prove you're a stowaway on a tiny, fragile spaceship we call Earth

Advertisement

Advertisement
nasa apollo 11 earth africa 1969 AS11 36 5352HR

NASA/Flickr

Apollo 11 astronauts took this photo of Earth on July 20, 1969.

From the ground, Earth looks like a boundless fertile plain that beckons to be explored and exploited.

But astronauts would beg - and even plead - to differ.

Complimentary Tech Event
Transform talent with learning that works
Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More

"You realize that people often say, 'I hope to go to heaven when I die,'" Jim Lovell, an astronaut who flew on the Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 missions to the moon, recently told Business Insider. "In reality, if you think about it, you go to heaven when you're born."

Lovell has seen first-hand that we live on a tiny rock hopelessly lost in the void. He's also quick to tell you it's the only one we've got - a fragile spaceship for 7 billion people and counting:

Advertisement

"You arrive on a planet that has the proper mass, has the gravity to contain water and an atmosphere, which are the very essentials for life. And you arrive on this planet that's orbiting a star just at the right distance - not too far to be too cold, or too close to be too hot - and just at the right distance to absorb that star's energy and then, with that energy, cause life to evolve here in the first place. In reality, you know, God has really given us a stage, just looking at where we were around the moon, a stage on which we perform. And how that play turns out is up to us, I guess." 

Humanity has recorded photos of Earth from hundreds, thousands, millions, and even billions of miles away, some of them taken by Lovell himself.

These images not only help scientists study our dynamic world, but also understand how a habitable planet looks from afar, which aids the search for more worlds. Most importantly, however, the images underscore our peculiar existence on a mote of cosmic dust

Take a moment to ponder 25 of the most arresting images of Earth that humankind has ever captured from space.