The whole Earth, seen from space: real or AI?

What we found

This is a photograph of the whole Earth, taken from space. The crew of Apollo 17 took it on 7 December 1972, while they were travelling towards the Moon. The crew were Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt, and NASA credits the picture to the crew as a whole rather than to one person. It shows the planet from the Mediterranean down to the ice cap at the South Pole, with heavy cloud over the southern half and much of Africa's coastline clear. NASA's record says it was the first time an Apollo flight path allowed the crew to photograph the south polar ice cap. The frame is catalogued as AS17-148-22727 in NASA's Image and Video Library. A picture this perfect can look made up, but here the original archive entry, with its date and frame number, settles it.

Key facts

Original source

Photo: NASA / Apollo 17 crew

First published

Not recorded

Earlier appearances

Not recorded

The claim you saw

No caption recorded

Signs of AI

None that decide it

The evidence, strongest first

What we couldn’t establish

Anything about the moment it shows beyond what the sources above record. If you know more, tell us.