Humanity has only had the ability to photograph the entire Earth from space since the late 1950s. Before that, no one had seen Earth from space. Seeing our world from this point of view has been one of the greatest changes of perspective that humanity has ever experienced. Against the emptiness of space, the Earth appears as a fragile oasis that houses all known life forms. The farther we see the Earth, the more fragile it seems. What are the most distant images ever made of our home world?
First Images of the Earth
This was the first image of the Earth taken from orbit, taken by the Explorer 6 satellite in 1959. NASA
The first image of the Earth taken from orbit was in 1959. The satellite that took the images was called Explorer 6, and it became the first satellite to take images of the Earth. Earth. When Explorer 6 took its first images of the Earth, it was 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. Until then, no one had seen Earth from such a distance, but that record would soon be broken when the space race began. In 1966, NASA launched its first lunar orbiter, called Lunar Orbiter 1. It became the first satellite launched by the United States to orbit the Moon, and also took the first images of the 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 humans to photograph the Earth from the Moon. A year later, the astronauts of Apollo 11 became the first humans to photograph the Earth from the surface of the Moon. The lunar surface is the farthest distance humans have physically photographed from Earth, but robotic spacecraft have far exceeded that distance.
The image of the pale blue dot
The image of the pale blue dot taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft at a distance of 3.7 billion miles. The Earth can be seen is a small spot on the right. NASA
In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. NASA took advantage of a rare planetary alignment that saw all the outer gas giants together. This meant that a spacecraft could visit each of the four planets, while using the gravitational pull of each planet to shoot at a higher speed. Both Voyagers visited Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 later visited Uranus and Neptune. 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 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers), astronomers decided to turn the spacecraft’s cameras toward the solar system and take a picture of each planet. At such a great distance, Voyager 1 could see all the planets in the solar system, all of which appeared as distant points of light. The combination of each image produced a mosaic of the entire solar system that became known as the Family Portrait. However, perhaps the most significant image taken by Voyager 1 was that 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 made of our planet. The image was called the pale blue dot. In this view, the Earth looks small as a piece of dust, trapped within a ray of sunshine.
Aidan Remple July 1, 2022 in Science