The Blue Marble is an image of the Earth made on December 7, 1972, at 05:39 a.m. EST by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers from the surface.

It is one of the most reproduced images in Human history. Apollo 17 was the last manned lunar mission.

No Human since has been far enough from Earth to photograph a whole-Earth image such as The Blue Marble.

The Blue Marble was not the first clear image taken of an illuminated face of the Earth, since similar shots from the ATS-3 satellite had already been made as early as 1967.

The Apollo 17 image, however, released during a surge in environmental activism during the 1970s, became a symbol of the environmental movement, as a depiction of Earth‘s frailty, vulnerability, and isolation amid the vast expanse of space.