When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Earthset captured through the Orion spacecraft window at 6:41 p.m. EDT, April 6, 2026, during the Artemis 2 crew’s flyby of the Moon. | Credit: NASAThis Earth Day, we reflect on our home planet and look at Earth from space through history.It’s “like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos,” Artemis 2 commander NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman wrote recently about seeing Earth slip behind the moon.NASA astronauts took this photo of Earth rising from lunar orbit during the Apollo 8 mission on Dec. 24, 1968. | Credit: NASAFifty-eight years ago, Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders captured “Earthrise,” which has become one of the most famous photographs in history. More than just the first high-resolution, color image of Earth from space, this photograph revealed the inherent fragility of our home.AdvertisementAdvertisementIt was a beautiful, stark reminder that our planet is a big rock, floating through space, protected from the harsh environment of space by a thin atmosphere. This photograph is said to have helped spark the environmental movement, and today it remains a powerful view.Earth as a “pale blue dot” seen by Voyager 1 in 1990. | Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechDecades after Earthrise, NASA’s robotic Voyager 1 spacecraft captured another iconic image of our home world: the famous “pale blue dot” photo. The Voyager program launched two probes, Voyager 1 and 2, out into the solar system in 1977, and in the decades since, they have flown past every major planet and are now traveling through interstellar space, farther awauy than any other craft in history.But on Feb. 14, 1991, Voyager snapped this image of Earth from a staggering 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the sun.In a scattered beam of sunlight, captured from billions of miles away, sat our home planet — the “pale blue dot,” as astronomer Carl Sagan famously dubbed it.An Artemis moonshotWith …
