Apollo 17 website

Earth Observatory website

Caption for Image 1: Earth View

View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the Moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica South polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the South polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the Northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is the Malagasy Republic. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the Northeast. CREDIT: NASA

High Resolution JPG of Image 1 (4 MB)

High Resolution TIF of Image 1 (60 MB)

Caption for Image 2: EARTH DAY STAMP

The Earth Day Stamp was part of the "Celebrate the Century -1970's" Collection, released by the U.S. Postal Service in 1999. Courtesy: USPS

High Resolution TIF of Image 2 (17.7)

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December 03, 2002 - (date of web publication)

APOLLO 17 ANNIVERSARY: CELEBRATING THIRTY YEARS OF EARTH-OBSERVING

	Image 1

December 7, 2002, marks the thirtieth birthday of one of the most breathtaking photographs ever taken. It was on this day in 1972 that NASA launched the sixth and final Apollo lunar-landing mission: Apollo 17 (Apollo 17). The legacy of Apollo 17 lives on through its crew, its scientific discoveries, and a single photograph taken during its magnificent journey.

This full-earth snapshot has become one of the most widely recognized and requested photographs of all time. It became a symbol of environmental awareness during the 1970's, making its way onto numerous posters, flags, and T-shirts with the slogan, "It's the only one we've got." The Apollo 17 photograph represents not only a milestone in space exploration but also a giant stepping-stone in the quest to understand and protect our home planet.

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Just after midnight on December 7, 1972, a Saturn V rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center, carrying the crew of Apollo 17. Cruising towards the Moon at nearly 30,000 miles away from Earth, Apollo 17 found itself aligned with the Earth and the Sun, enabling the crew to take this 70 mm full-disk photograph of the planet. For the first time in an Apollo mission, the Antarctic continent was lit by the Sun and visible to the astronauts. Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt journeyed to the Moon to study its geology and to obtain the greatest number and variety of photographs of any Apollo mission thus far. To this day, Cernan and Schmitt are the last two people to have set foot on the Moon.

We've come a long way in thirty years. With innovative satellite technologies and sophisticated computer modeling, today we are able to see and understand our planet in completely new ways. Our planet has undergone vast transformations in its lifetime. Although many of these changes have occurred over immense spans of time, we have recently become more aware of some immediate changes in weather, topography, and biology, to name a few. With an entire array of Earth-observing satellites in orbit, we can take snapshots of Earth's dynamic systems at regular intervals and monitor changes over time.

The most detailed image of the entire Earth to date is the new "Blue Marble" image (Earth Observatory Blue Marble), created in 2002. To form the Blue Marble, NASA scientists and visualizers stitched together months of satellite observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square miles) of our planet.

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