Humanity has only had the ability to photograph the entire Earth from space since the late 1950s. No one had ever seen Earth from space before. Seeing our world from such a perspective is one of the greatest changes in perspective that humanity has ever experienced. Against the background of the emptiness of space, Earth looks like a fragile oasis, harboring all known forms of life. The farther we see the Earth, the more fragile it appears. What are the most distant pictures ever taken from our home world?
First images of Earth
This is the first image of Earth taken from orbit, taken by the Explorer 6 satellite in 1959. NASA
The first image of Earth taken from orbit was in 1959. The satellite that took the images was called Explorer 6 and became the first satellite to take images of Earth. When Explorer 6 took its first images of Earth, it was 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. Until then, no one had seen Earth from such a distance, but that record would soon be broken with the start of the space race. In 1966, NASA launched its first lunar orbiter, called Lunar Orbiter 1. It became the first satellite launched by the United States into orbit around the Moon, and also took the first images of Earth from the Moon at a distance of 239,000 miles ( 384,000 kilometers). Two years later, in 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts became the first people to photograph the Earth from the Moon. One year after that, Apollo 11 astronauts became the first people to photograph Earth from the surface of the Moon. The lunar surface is the furthest distance humans have physically taken pictures of Earth, but robotic spacecraft go far beyond that distance.
The image of a pale blue dot
Image of a faint blue dot taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft at a distance of 3.7 billion miles. Earth can be seen as a small speck on the right. NASA
In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. NASA took advantage of a rare planetary alignment in which all the outer gas giants line up together. This meant that a spacecraft could visit any of the four planets while using the gravitational pull of each planet to slingshot itself to a higher speed. Both Voyagers visited Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 visited Uranus and Neptune next. As Voyager 1 continued into the outer regions of the Solar System, astronomers realized they had an incredible opportunity. In 1990, while Voyager 1 was 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) away, astronomers decided to point the spacecraft’s cameras at the solar system and take a picture of each planet. At such a vast distance, Voyager 1 was able to see every planet in the Solar System, all of which appeared to be distant points of light. Combining each image created a mosaic of the entire solar system that became known as the Family Portrait. But perhaps the most significant image taken by Voyager 1 is of Earth. Voyager 1 took an image of the entire Earth from a distance of 3.7 billion miles, making it the most distant image ever taken of our planet. The image was named Pale Blue Dot. In this view, the Earth appears as small as a speck of dust caught in a sunbeam.
Aidan Remple July 1, 2022 in Science
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