The first US spacewalk took place in 1965 during the Gemini 4 mission. Astronaut James McDivitt took this dramatic photo of fellow astronaut Ed White outside the spacecraft. Earth is visible in the background.
This first image of the Earth as seen from the area of the moon gave humans a new perspective on their home. NASA’s Lunar Orbiter captured this image in 1966.
This image from 1965 was groundbreaking, providing the “first view of another planet from above the Earth’s atmosphere.”
NASA astronaut John Glenn snapped this photo from space in 1962 during the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission.
An automatic camera attached to a rocket in 1948 captured multiple images of the Earth. The assembled panorama shows the curvature of the Earth.
A camera hitched a ride on a rocket in 1946 to take this first photograph from space.
The Gemini 8 mission in 1966 featured the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit, as seen in this image. The spacecraft were soon forced to undock due to a system failure. Crew members aborted the mission and returned safely to Earth.
In 1967, humans got to see the first color image of the Earth taken from outer space. This rare image was taken from 18,000 miles with a black and white TV camera which took three photographs with red, green and blue filters to create the colour image.
The historic Apollo 11 moon mission in 1969 provided the denizens of Earth with the first photograph of a man standing on the surface of another world. Taken by astronaut Neil Armstrong, the image shows Buzz Aldrin on the moon, setting up a solar wind sheet.