The very first image of the Earth seen from space was taken on October 24, 1946. That day a group of American scientists succeeded in launching a rocket with a built-in camera. It went 105 kilometres up in the sky. The launching took place at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The photographs by Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (b. 1930) - the present being one of the most famous - inserted itself in h istory in another fashion, namely by being the first photographs taken by human beings. The quality of the images created by the two men on July 21 and July 22, 1969 is high - ironically so high that conspiracy theorists ever since have used exactly this as an argument: How should it be possible at that day and age and under the given circumstances to produce such excellent photographs?