The first photo of the Earth seen from the surface of another planet took place 20 years ago.
It was taken from Mars by NASA's Spirit rover.
Now that photo is part of an album that collects historical images of our planet seen from space.
About two months after its arrival on the red planet, Spirit had photographed the Earth in the Martian dawn of March 8, 2004: the rover had pointed its camera towards the sky, in an attempt to capture a partial solar eclipse due to the transit of Mars' moon, Deimos, on the solar disk.
Among the images sent to Earth, a small bright point similar to the other stars also appeared: it was the Earth, photographed for the first time from the surface of another planet.
That photo, which marked the history of space exploration, was replicated 10 years later by another Martian rover, Curiosity.
From that photo it is possible to see our planet much clearer.
Both photos are part of the collection of the most important photos taken of our planet from space, in the album in which NASA has brought together historical portraits.
Among these, the first ever was that of the Explorer 6 satellite, dated 14 August 1959, which shows a blurry portion of the planet.
The first image of the entire Earth disk was taken only 7 years later by the Soviet satellite Molniya 1-3 and later replicated by the crew of the Apollo 17 mission. The latter is probably the most famous and popular photo of the Earth from space, went down in history with the name of Blue Marble.
The catalog also includes the first photo simultaneously portraying the Earth and the Moon, taken by Voyager 1 in 1977, up to the recent shot from June 2023 taken by the Parker probe, which portrays the Earth seen through the Sun's corona.
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