This picture of the Earth and Moon in a single frame was taken by the Galileo spacecraft from about 3.9 million miles away. Antarctica is visible through clouds (bottom). The Moon's far side is seen; the shadowy indentation in the dawn terminator is the south pole Aitken Basin, one of the largest and oldest lunar impact features.
On March 7, 1947, not long after the end of World War II and years before Sputnik ushered in the space age, a group of soldiers and scientists in the New Mexico desert saw something new and wonderful in these grainy black-and-white-photos — the first pictures of Earth as seen from altitude greater than 100 miles in space.
A “Blue Marble” image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's Earth-observing satellite — Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on Jan. 4, 2012.
A graceful arc of Saharan dust is streaming off the coast of northwest Africa and sweeping out over the Atlantic Ocean and the Canary Islands in this Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image from the Aqua satellite on February 18, 2004.
Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts — Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders — held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft.
This global view of Earth’s city lights is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite. The data was acquired over nine days in April 2012 and thirteen days in October 2012.
Finney County in southwestern Kansas is now irrigated cropland where once there was shortgrass prairie. The image shows center-pivot irrigation systems that are 800 and 1,600 meters in diameter (0.5 and 1 mile). The image was acquired on June 24, 2001, is centered near 37.4 degrees north latitude, 100.9 degrees west longitude, and covers an area of 37.2 x 38.8 km.
Malaspina Glacier in southeastern Alaska is considered the classic example of a piedmont glacier. Piedmont glaciers occur where valley glaciers exit a mountain range onto broad lowlands, are no longer laterally confined, and spread to become wide lobes. This perspective view was created from a Landsat satellite image and an elevation model generated by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM).
The Space Shuttle Endeavour's robotic arm hovers over Earth's horizon, backdropped by a starburst from the Sun. This photo was taken during the STS-77 shuttle mission in 1996.
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), flown aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in February 2000, acquired elevation measurements for nearly all of Earth's landmass between 60°N and 56°S latitudes. SRTM data were used to generate this view of the Crater Highlands along the East African Rift in Tanzania. Lake Eyasi is depicted in blue at the top of the image, and a smaller lake occurs in Ngorongoro Crater.
This portrait of global aerosols was produced by the NASA Center for Climate Simulation at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Dust (red) is lifted from the surface, sea salt (blue) swirls inside cyclones, smoke (green) rises from fires, and sulfate particles (white) stream from volcanoes and fossil fuel emissions.
The Aquarius spacecraft is designed to measure global sea surface salinity. It is important to understand salinity, the amount of dissolved salts in water, because it will lead us to better understanding of the water cycle and can lead to improved climate models.
Data from the expansion of Las Vegas, Nevada was compiled from the fleet of Landsat satellites. The large red areas are actually green space, mostly golf courses and city parks. The image was created using reflected light from the near-infrared, red and green portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The terrain for the scientific work conducted by ICESCAPE scientists on July 4, 2010, was Arctic sea ice and melt ponds in the Chukchi Sea. The five-week field mission was dedicated to sampling the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of the ocean and sea ice.
TIROS undergoes vibration testing at the Astro-Electronic Products Division of RCA in Princeton, New Jersey. On April 1, 1960, a satellite designed by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) launched to become the nation's first weather satellite. That satellite, the Television InfraRed Observational Satellite, or TIROS 1, operated for only 78 days but demonstrated the feasibility of monitoring Earth's cloud cover and weather patterns from space.
NASA spacecraft watched closely in 2005 as a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season yielded 27 named storms, including the devastating Hurricane Katrina, seen here at full strength in an Aug. 29, 2005 image from the GOES-12 weather satellite.
This image shows the abundance of life in the sea, measured by the SeaWiFS instrument aboard the Seastar satellite. Dark blue represents warmer areas where there is little life due to lack of nutrients, and greens and reds represent cooler nutrient-rich areas.
Changing weather conditions left their mark on sea ice along the Antarctic Peninsula in late 2008 and early 2009. In mid-December 2008, melt water resting on the sea ice colored it sky blue. At the beginning of 2009, however, the sea ice appeared snowy white, and cracks had begun along the ice margin. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA's Terra satellite captured these images on December 13, 2008 (left), and January 2, 2009 (right). Both images show the northern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula.
This image from Apollo 17, and others like it, captured whole hemispheres of water, land and weather. This photo was the first view of the south polar ice cap. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is visible, along with the Arabian Peninsula.
This composite image, which has become a popular poster, shows a global view of Earth at night, compiled from over 400 satellite images. NASA researchers have used these images of nighttime lights to study weather around urban areas.
The first photo of Earth from a weather satellite, taken by the TIROS-1 satellite on April 1, 1960. Early photographs provided new information on cloud systems, including spiral formations associated with large storms, immediately proving their value to meteorologists.
