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Last month, NASA’s Artemis II mission marked a historic milestone as its crew safely splashed down after traveling to the far side of the moon. While journeying through space on the Orion spacecraft, Commander Reid Wiseman captured a stunning high-resolution image of Earth—only the second time a human has photographed our planet from such a distance since the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.
NASA recently shared both images—taken 50 years apart—side by side, offering a glimpse of how Earth appeared through the eyes of astronauts on two historic missions. While some people noted that the newer image of Earth looks dimmer than the one taken half a century ago, NASA pointed out that the difference is “literally night and day.”
The earlier image, taken by Harrison H. Schmitt from the Apollo 17 mission, was captured while the crew was on its way to the moon. Known as The Blue Marble, the historic image shows Earth’s daytime face, lit by sunlight. It stretches from the Mediterranean down to Antarctica’s ice cap, marking the first time that region was photographed from this trajectory. Africa’s coastline is clearly visible, along with the Arabian Peninsula, Madagascar, and even parts of Asia on the horizon, all beneath swirling clouds over the Southern Hemisphere.
The more recent image, captured by Reid Wiseman on April 2, 2026, reveals Earth’s night side, illuminated only by moonlight. Like the Apollo 17 photo, it was taken en route to the moon, but the technology has come a long way. While Schmitt shot the original 1972 image using a modified Hasselblad 500 EL camera, Wiseman used a DSLR with long-exposure settings, revealing details that would’ve otherwise remained hidden in darkness.
In the Artemis II mission image, titled Hello, World, the South Pole appears near the top, while the North Pole sits toward the lower left. If you look closely, auroras shimmer at both poles. The soft glow in the lower right is zodiacal light—caused by sunlight scattering off interplanetary dust—with the sun positioned just behind Earth, creating the glow effect.
Check out Earth, in all its beauty, in both images below.
Taken 50 years apart, these images show how Earth looked to astronauts on the historic Apollo 17 and Artemis II missions.
“The Blue Marble,” photographed on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft
(Photo: Harrison Schmitt / Apollo 17 via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
Image of Earth taken by Reid Wiseman from the Artemis II spacecraft on April 2, 2026
(Photo: Kevin M. Gill, Artemis II via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
Source: NASA Earth
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