New year, new horizon

An astronaut took this photo of Earth as he looked towards NASA’s next target for human exploration: a return to the moon. As NASA prepares for future Artemis missions to the Lunar South Pole, the agency and its partners are also celebrating the 20th anniversary of the continued human presence on the International Space Station (ISS).

This photo represents another achievement of those programs, as it was taken from the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle after detaching from the ISS. It was the final leg of the SpaceX Demo-2 mission, the first manned space flight from US soil since 2011. The crew kept watch over eastern Kazakhstan on their return flight after two months on the station.

This photo is just one of more than four million that astronauts have taken of Earth since NASA’s manned space flight programs began. Astronauts will continue to photograph our planet, whether from low Earth orbit or, as Apollo astronauts once did, from the moon. These snapshots in time uniquely document the ever-changing surface of the Earth.

Join NASA as we celebrate the New Year and look forward to what the next 20 years of space exploration and Earth observation may bring.

Editor’s Note – Learn more about astronaut photography in all three parts Imagine the earth video series: part 1 Astronaut Photography in Focus; part 2 Window on the world; and part 3 behind the scenes.

Astronaut photograph ISS063-E-68417 was acquired on August 2, 2020 with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a 14 mm lens and is provided by the ISS crew’s Earth Observation Center and the Earth Sciences and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 63 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced for contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station program is supporting the laboratory as part of the ISS National Laboratory to help astronauts take and render photos of the Earth that will be of greatest value to scientists and the public. available free on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA / JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Andrea Meado, Jacobs / JETS contract at NASA-JSC.