How 50 years of climate change has changed the face of the 'Blue Marble' from space

Technology

How 50 years of climate change has changed the face of the 'Blue Marble' from space

The "Blue Marble" was the first photograph of the whole Earth and the only one ever taken by a human. Fifty years on, new images of the planet reveal visible changes to the Earth's surface.

By Arman – News Editor

Save it

March 11, 2025

"I'll tell you," said astronaut Harrison Schmitt as the Apollo 17 hurtled towards the Moon, "if there ever was a fragile-appearing piece of blue in space, it's the Earth right now".

It was Thursday 7 December 1972, that humanity got its first look at our planet as a whole. In that moment, the photograph "The Blue Marble" was taken – one which changed the way we saw our world.

"I can see the lights of southern California, Bob," said Schmitt to ground control about one and a half hours into the flight. "Man's field of stars on the Earth is competing with the heavens."

The crew of the Apollo 17 – commander Eugene Cernan, command module pilot Ronald Evans and lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt – were watching their home recede into the distance as they journeyed into space for the last manned mission to the Moon.

Looking back towards the Earth, Cernan commented: "the clouds seem to be very artistic, very picturesque. Some in clockwise rotating fashion… but appear to be… very thin where you can… see through those clouds to the blue water below."

It is an enduring image of the beauty but also the vulnerability of our planet – adrift as it is in the vastness of the Universe, which hosts no other signs of life that we have been able to detect to date. But ours is also a planet of great change. The tectonic movements that shift the landmasses move too slow for our eyes to notice. Yet another force – humanity itself – has been reshaping our planet at a pace that we can see. Urbanisation, deforestation, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are altering the way the Earth looks. So how, over the 50 years since that iconic image was taken, has the Blue Marble changed?

Nasa The crew handed the camera to each other, each taking photographs throughout the journey to the Moon (Credit: Nasa) — The crew handed the camera to each other, each taking photographs throughout the journey to the Moon (Credit: Nasa)

Those first images of the Blue Marble were taken by the crew, who passed the onboard camera – a hand-held analogue Hasselblad 500 EL loaded with 70mm Kodak film – between them, captivated by the sight of the Earth from space.

"All the images captured with Hasselblads are spectacularly clear and bright," says Jennifer Levasseur, curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

The camera was specially modified for use in space, she adds. Glues, lubricants, moving parts and batteries could all cause problems or fail when exposed to the extremes of hot and cold in space. It was also given a large square shutter-release button so the crew could use it while wearing their cumbersome spacesuits.

"The other major modification, was the removal of the viewing screen – because it's extra glass," Levasseur says, The astronauts, "had to learn how to take pictures without being able to see anything", she says. "Without a viewfinder, you can't see what you're taking."

Nasa Clouds swirl over blue seas, captured by the crew of Apollo 17 after the second pass over Africa before continuing on to the Moon (Credit: Nasa) — Clouds swirl over blue seas, captured by the crew of Apollo 17 after the second pass over Africa before continuing on to the Moon (Credit: Nasa)

Taking photos, says Levasseur, was planned meticulously and written into the mission plan. "They had known previous launches wouldn't give them whole Earth, but on this one the whole Earth would be entirely illuminated by the light of the Sun."

It was around five hours and 20 minutes into the flight that the crew got their first glimpse of the entire planet. The crew were starting to get ready for bed, zipping into their sleeping bags. It was their first moment of downtime since the launch.

"I suppose we're seeing as 100% full Earth as we'll ever see," said Cernan. "Bob, it's these kind of views that stick with you forever… There's no strings holding it up either. It's out there all by itself."

The Blue Marble image was captured at around 29,000km (18,000 miles) from Earth, as the Sun lit up the globe from behind the Apollo 17.

At 07.39 GMT on 7 December 2022 – 50 years later to the minute since the original was taken – a new "Blue Marble" was captured by a satellite orbiting a million miles away. This time, a set of 12 images taken 15 minutes apart, reveal noticeable changes to our planet's surface, the result of 50 years of global warming.

In the 50 years that separates these two snapshots in time, one of the most striking differences is the visible reduction in the size of the Antarctic ice sheet. "You can see the shrinking cryosphere – the shrinking ice sheet and the loss of the snow," says Pepin says. This, he says, is a major indicator of climate change.

The Sahara Desert has also grown while the rainforest "is retreating further south", he adds. Research has shown that tree cover in the vast Sahel region that borders the Sahara Desert has been in significant decline. "The dominant thing that you can see on the [new] image is deforestation and the loss of vegetation", as the Earth's land cover switches from greenery to desert.

Nasa Epic The new Blue Marble was taken from a million miles away (Credit: Nasa Epic) — The new Blue Marble was taken from a million miles away (Credit: Nasa Epic)

The pictures were taken by Nasa's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (Epic), which has been imaging the sunlit side of Earth between 13 and 22 times a day since 2015. The satellite sits at the first Lagrange point, a point of equilibrium between the Sun and Earth, a million miles from Earth.

From mid-April to mid-October, one photograph is taken of the Earth roughly every hour, and for the rest of the year it takes an image every two hours, says Alexander Marshak, deputy project scientist for Nasa's Deep Space Climate Observatory (Dscovr) satellite mission, which the camera is carried aboard.

"With respect to the Blue Marble, on the 50th anniversary, we decided to take the same images at 15 minute intervals. So, in 15 minutes [the Earth] rotates around maybe 100km (62 miles)," says Marshak. And, thanks to advances in technology, he adds, "we can see the same images, but with much better quality", even from a million miles away.

More like this:

• 'Earthrise': The photo that sparked an environmental movement

• Out of this world: 11 spacewalks that made history

• What the planets aligning really means

"And we can see much more than that," Marshak adds. "We take images in 10 wavelengths, from UV [ultraviolet] to near infrared. From these images we can retrieve the property of ozone, of clouds, of water. The height of clouds, the location of clouds. We can look at the property of aerosols, the size of particles, the amount of particles. We retrieve even the shape of ice crystals [in the clouds], using the Sun's glint. We can [see] whether they're horizontally or randomly oriented."

Nasa Epic Here we see the Earth at a different angle from the original Blue Marble, this image having been taken by Epic at a different time of year, on 14 April 2025 (Credit: Nasa Epic) — Here we see the Earth at a different angle from the original Blue Marble, this image having been taken by Epic at a different time of year, on 14 April 2025 (Credit: Nasa Epic)

"We retrieve [data on] the amount of leaves on Earth, and not only that but also the amount of leaves that are directly illuminated by the Sun," says Marshak. This data, combined with observations of ocean surface colour, can allow researchers to determine the rate of all photosynthetic activity on Earth.

The Dscovr programme hasn't been running long enough to draw any definitive conclusions, says Marshak, but they are starting to gather data that will provide new insights into how the world is changing – such as changes in cloud cover and height, reflectivity, and vegetation cover.

Among the other changes that have occurred since that first image of the entire Earth 50 years ago is the amount of human development and activity on our planet's surface. Although not visible in these images of the daylight side of the Earth, other satellites monitor for lights visible on the dark side of our planet. These show dramatic expansions in the urban sprawl across the continents alongside the activity of shipping on the Earth's oceans. Wildfires also glow across large swathes of the land at night, doubling in frequency in just the past 20 years

Back in 1972, the Blue Marble prompted a mass-reconsideration of our place in the Universe. Astronauts viewing Earth from space have reported a profound feeling of awe, a sense of interconnectedness and environmental awareness, and of self-transcendence. This is called the "overview effect".

In the utter vastness of space, the beauty of Earth can be overwhelming. This feeling of intense awe has been found to elicit a fundamental change in thinking, a kind of cognitive realignment also called the "need for accommodation", as the person attempts to this process new perceptual information.

"Gobsmackingly – just – wow" is how Helen Sharman, the UK's first astronaut, described her first view of the Earth from space. It was 1991 and the 27-year-old chemist had just launched from Kazakhstan, to begin her journey to the Soviet Mir space station.