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In December of 1972, the crew of the Apollo 17 mission captured soil in its entirety for the first time. The Blue Marble photograph snapped by astronauts (pictured above) showed our planet as a perfect, fully illuminated sphere.
The photo showed a dusty Sahara Desert at the top, and at the bottom is a white-washed Antarctica. This wasn't some sliver of planet,partially cloaked in the black of space—the photo finally showed the whole soil. To date, it's one of the most widely distributed images in history, and an icon for environmentalists.
Since then,there hasn't been a spacecraft in a far enough orbit to take another Blue Marble photograph, aside from composite images assembled by NASA .
But just final month, and the NASA DSCOVR satellite was able to capture another whole-soil picture for the first time since 1972 (pictured below).
Dr. Mae Jemison,a former Astronaut on Endeavor shuttle and a current principal of the 100 Year Starship project, says the image DSCOVR has brought back to soil is just like what she has seen from space.
The Blue Marble in 2015.
(NASA)
Source: wnyc.org