The study of Earth's atmosphere from higher altitude began in 1946. This is a photo captured on October 24, 1946, from a German V-2 rocket from an altitude of 65 miles. (NASA)
The first satellite photo of Earth was obtained by the Explorer VI in 1959 at an altitude of 17,000 miles. It shows a sun-lit area of the Central Pacific ocean and its cloud cover. (NASA)
This is the first photo of weather systems over the entire Earth. It was created by merging 450 pictures taken by TIROS-9 meteorological satellite on February 13, 1965. (NASA)
In 1992, a "family portrait" of Earth and the Moon captured by Galileo spacecraft from a vantage point about 3.9 million miles away had awed space enthusiasts. (NASA)
In the same year, the rarely seen "dark side" of the Moon became visible in the photo clicked by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) from 1 million miles away. (NASA)
