This reconstructed image shows a view that only 24 Apollo astronauts have ever seen.
What do we see in today’s NASA image?
This stunning photo shows the sunlit crescent of our beautiful planet against the black background of space. In this image with such a perspective, the Earth is like a telescopic image of a small distant planet, and the horizon line is completely in the field of view.
The crew of the International Space Station, in low Earth orbit and orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes, only has access to much closer views of the planet. They see a view of clouds, oceans and continents, with a slight arc of the edge of the planet in the distance. But this digitally reconstructed image shows a view that only 24 Apollo astronauts have ever seen. These astronauts traveled to the moon between 1968 and 1972.
The original photo (AS17-152-23420) was taken by the Apollo 17 crew on December 17, 1972, on their way back to Earth. Currently, this is the last human-recorded image of planet Earth from this angle.
