--- title: 'Blue Marble' and Earth Day: Celebrating the Iconic Apollo 17 Photo description: No other photograph of planet Earth has ever felt at-once so momentous and somehow so manageable, so companionable, as NASA's 'Blue Marble.' canonical: https://time.com/3879555/blue-marble-apollo-17-photo-of-earth-from-space/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-04-11T12:38:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:44.675Z og:title: 'Blue Marble' and Earth Day: Celebrating the Iconic Apollo 17 Photo og:description: No other photograph of planet Earth has ever felt at-once so momentous and somehow so manageable, so companionable, as NASA's 'Blue Marble.' og:url: https://time.com/3879555/blue-marble-apollo-17-photo-of-earth-from-space/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4cf5b31eb714ff95/698848cb428a9e9df1ccc7c1/the_blue_marble_nasa.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: LIFE.com, Blue Marble, 1972 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Blue Marble' and Earth Day: Celebrating the Iconic Apollo 17 Photo twitter:description: No other photograph of planet Earth has ever felt at-once so momentous and somehow so manageable, so companionable, as NASA's 'Blue Marble.' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4cf5b31eb714ff95/698848cb428a9e9df1ccc7c1/the_blue_marble_nasa.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Home, Sweet Home: In Praise of Apollo 17's 'Blue Marble' > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Twice a week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Apr 11, 2014 12:38 PM UTC  View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon, Dec. 7, 1972. View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon, Dec. 7, 1972. NASA by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Apr 11, 2014 12:38 PM UTC It was not the first jaw-dropping picture of Earth from outer space. That title legitimately belongs to “Earthrise,” a photograph of our lively blue planet floating above the dead, gray horizon of the moon taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders in December 1968. Nor is it the one photograph that most powerfully suggests the awe-inspiring — and sometimes terrifying — vastness of space. For many of us, the photo known as [“Pillars of Creation](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120722.html), made in 1995 by the Hubble Telescope, still holds that honor. But no other photograph ever made of planet Earth has ever felt at-once so momentous and somehow so manageable, so _companionable_, as “Blue Marble” — the famous picture taken December 7, 1972, by the crew of Apollo 17 as they sped toward the moon on NASA’s last manned lunar mission. [\[MORE: Read Jeff Kluger’s take on NASA’s 2012, high-def version of “Blue Marble.”\]](http://lightbox.time.com/2012/02/09/blue-marble/#1) A large part of Blue Marble’s lasting appeal surely has something to do with the fact that the proportions and the features on display in the photo are so familiar. In a roughly square frame sits the almost perfectly round Earth, seen from a distance of about 28,000 miles. We not only see Africa: we _recognize_ Africa. We recognize the Arabian Peninsula. We see Antarctica’s polar ice cap; in fact, we can almost discern its texture. And while it’s surely an illusion abetted by the gorgeous, swirling clouds against the deep blue of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, but it almost seems that we can make out tiny crests of waves far below, on the sea. The caption, meanwhile, that NASA drafted for this image remains a model of near-clinical clarity: --- > “” --- No bravado. No chest-thumping. Just an admirable, matter-of-fact restraint that nevertheless belies not only the significance of the image, but its surpassing beauty. Beyond its status as an enduring reminder of the final Apollo mission, however, the picture also has, in one regard, as unexpectedly elegiac feel. A few weeks after the photo was made, LIFE — the magazine that for decades had covered NASA and the Space Race more intimately and assiduously than any other publication — closed up shop. Blue Marble is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a LIFE picture. But LIFE magazine’s final issue was published just three short weeks after the photo was made. The symbolism of these two groundbreaking and somehow peculiarly _American_ endeavors — the Apollo program and the grand experiment that was LIFE — ending at the same time verges on the poetic, and carries with it a thrilling sense of exactitude. Of _course_ they had to go out together. [\[MORE: See “The Best of LIFE: 37 Years in Pictures.”\]](http://life.time.com/history/the-best-of-life-37-years-in-pictures/#1) One is reminded of Mark Twain’s characteristically loaded, amusing observation about his own fate being linked, somehow, to Halley’s Comet. “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835,” he told his biographer in 1909, referencing his own birth and the comet’s previous appearance. “It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with it. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'” Twain died the next year, in 1910 — the same year that Halley’s Comet made its first appearance (and exit) in the heavens since the year of his birth. _— Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com_  View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon, Dec. 7, 1972. 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