Taken by: Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) spacecraft
Date: April 9, 2015
NASA and NOAA created this composite image using photos taken by Suomi NPP, a weather satellite that orbits Earth 14 times a day. You can see the Joalane tropical cyclone in the Indian Ocean (top right).
Source: NASA
Taken by: Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16 (GOES-16)
Date: January 15, 2017
GOES-16 launched on November 19, 2016, and orbits about 22,300 miles (35,900 kilometers) above Earth — a position called geostationary orbit. This allows the satellite to stay above the same spot and monitor changes in the atmosphere, ground, and ocean over time. The spacecraft regularly sees the moon and uses it to calibrate cameras.
Source: NOAA
Taken by: Rosetta
Date: November 12, 2009
The Rosetta spacecraft crashed into comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on September 30, 2016. On its way, it took this photo of Earth that shows the South Pole and Antarctica illuminated by the sun.
Source: ESA
Taken by: Apollo 17's crew
Date: December 7, 1972
The crew of the last crewed lunar mission, Apollo 17, took this "blue marble" photo of Earth — one of the most-reproduced images in history, though no one is certain which astronaut took it — from 28,000 miles away on their trip to the moon. Africa is visible at the top left of the image, and Antarctica on the bottom.
Source: NASA
Taken by: Apollo 11's crew
Date: July 20, 1969
A view of Africa 98,000 miles from Earth, taken while astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin were on their way to the moon.
Source: NASA/Flickr; NASA
Taken by: William Anders of Apollo 8's crew
Date: December 24, 1968
NASA's famous "Earthrise" image was taken as Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders swung around the moon. During a broadcast with Earth, Lovell said: "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth."
Source: NASA
Taken by: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
Date: October 12, 2015
Launched by NASA in 2009, LRO normally stares down at the cratered surface of the moon — but took a moment to snap this modern-day "Earthrise" composite photo.
Sources: NASA, Business Insider
Taken by: Lunar Orbiter 1
Date: August 23, 1966
Lunar Orbiter 1 took this photo while scouting for places astronauts could land on the moon. Because 1960s technology couldn't access the full depth of image data that NASA had recorded on analog tapes, however, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project recently recovered this version of the famous image. The full-size version is large enough to print as a billboard.
Source: NASA/LOIRP
Taken by: Michael Collins of Apollo 11's crew
Date: July 21, 1969
The "Eagle" lunar module of Apollo 11 as it returns from the surface of the moon.
Source: NASA
Taken by: Chang'e 5-T1
Date: October 29, 2014
A rare view of the far side of the moon, taken by the China National Space Administration's lunar probe. China has grown increasingly capable of exploring the solar system alongside NASA, ESA, Russia, India, and other space-faring nations. Its next moon mission: to return a lunar soil sample in 2017. If it succeeds, it will be the first collected since the last Apollo missions in the 1970s.
Sources: NASA APOD, The Planetary Society
Taken by: Clementine 1
Date: 1994
The Clementine mission was launched on January 25, 1994, as part of a joint NASA-strategic defense initiative. Before spinning wildly out of control on May 7, 1994, it took this composite photo of Earth, as seen across the northern pole of the moon.
Source: NASA GSFC
Taken by: Mariner 10
Date: November 3, 1973
A combination of two photos (one of Earth and one of the moon) taken by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft, which journeyed to Mercury, Venus, and the moon after launching from a repurposed Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
Source: NASA
Taken by: Galileo
Date: December 16, 1992
On its way to study Jupiter and its moons, NASA's Galileo spacecraft took this composite image from 3.9 million miles away. The moon, which is about one-third as bright as Earth, is closer to the viewer in the foreground.
Source: NASA
Taken by: Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR)
Date: January 23, 1998
NASA's asteroid-bound NEAR spacecraft took this two-part image of Earth and the moon from about 250,000 miles. Antarctica is visible in the south pole. NEAR eventually reached Asteroid 433 Eros, began orbiting the space rock, and deployed its Shoemaker lander spacecraft in 2001.
Source: NASA APOD
Taken by: Voyager 1
Date: September 18, 1977
Most photos of Earth and the moon are (artful) cut-and-paste composites, since they are so far away from one another. However, this is the first photo of both worlds ever taken in a single frame, when Voyager 1 was 7.25 million miles away — en route to its "grand tour" of the solar system.
Source: NASA
Taken by: Mars Express
Date: July 3, 2003
Nearly 5 million miles from Earth, the Mars Express spacecraft snapped this photo on its way to the Red Planet. The satellite has orbited Mars and photographed its surface in 3D since December 2003.
Taken by: Mars Odyssey
Date: April 19, 2001
This infrared photo, taken from 2.2 million miles away, reveals the vast distance between Earth and the moon — 239,000 miles, about 30 times the diameter of Earth. The Mars Odyssey spacecraft recorded the image on its way to the Red Planet.
Source: NASA
Taken by: Juno
Date: August 26, 2011
NASA's Juno spacecraft took this shot (and many others, which were made into a fantastic animation) during its nearly 5-year-long trip to Jupiter. The probe is documenting the gas giant in ways scientists had previously only dreamed of — including the first-ever images of the planet's poles. When the mission wraps up in a year or two, NASA will plunge Juno into the clouds of Jupiter to prevent contaminating nearby icy moons.
Source: NASA, Business Insider
Taken by: Spirit Mars Exploration Rover
Date: March 9, 2004
About two months after a textbook landing on Mars, the Spirit rover gazed up at the sky to look for Earth — and found it as a tiny dot. NASA says this "is the first image ever taken of Earth from the surface of a planet beyond the Moon." In this shot, Earth is roughly 161 million miles away.
Source: NASA
Taken by: Cassini
Date: September 15, 2006
NASA's nuclear-powered Cassini spacecraft took 165 different photos in the shadow of Saturn to make this backlit mosaic of the gas giant. Almost by accident, Earth is hiding in the image, off to the left. Although it looks like a bright speck in Saturn's rings, the world is actually 928 million miles away.
Source: NASA
Taken by: Voyager 1
Date: February 14, 1990
This photo of Earth — the "pale blue dot" — is just one frame of a "solar system portrait" that Voyager 1 took, roughly 4 billion miles away from home.
Here's part of Sagan's speech about the image:
"We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there – on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."
Source: NASA
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