Gallery: Blue Marble 50 Years Later

These images, captured by the EPIC instrument on the DSCOVR satellite, show the Earth 50 years after the famous "blue marble" photograph taken by the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The “blue marble” photo, the first true-color image of the fully-illuminated Earth captured from space, became an iconic symbol of our planet and the environmental movement.

This set of images was taken starting on December 7th, 2022, at 7:39 UTC at 15-minute intervals, with the last image being at 10:39 UTC – the same time that the original “blue marble” photo was taken. The variation in the appearance of Africa is due to the different perspectives from which the images were taken: the Apollo image was taken much closer to the Earth, at 18,000 miles, so less of the disk was visible compared to EPIC’s view from almost a million miles away.