Chris Bell and Creative Design Studios Team proud to bring you Blue Marble and Blue Marble Next Generation!
Everyone knows that NASA studies space; fewer people know that NASA also studies Earth. The Earth didn't appear blue in NASA's first satellite images; rather, the Television Infrared Observation Satellite, known as TIROS, beamed home images in black and white. On December 7, 1972, the crew of Apollo 17 changed the way we look at our home planet. This photograph illustrates the Earth as an isolated ecosystem, floating in space taken during the Apollo mission; provided full-color images of Earth, from a distance of about 45,000 km (28,000 mi)