We’ve been capturing space-based images of Earth for nearly three-quarters of a century, but these eight views of Earth are each profound in their own way.
Images of Earth from space are now so commonplace that it’s hard to fathom the pre-spaceflight era—a time when people were forced to use their imaginations instead. The first suborbital images of Earth were cause for celebration, but we could scarcely imagine what was to come. Within a few years and decades, we were snapping pics of Earth from the Moon, a neighboring planet, and from deep within the solar system.