More than 50 years after Apollo 8’s legendary Earthrise photo, a new image from the Moon’s surface delivers a hauntingly different view.

Captured by the Blue Ghost lander in 2025, this photograph portrays Earth as a ghostly, distant orb hovering over the lunar expanse.

A Photograph That Changed the World

In 1968, during Apollo 8’s historic orbit around the Moon, astronaut Bill Anders took one of the most famous photographs in history: Earthrise. The image captured Earth as a brilliant blue-and-white sphere rising above the Moon’s barren landscape. It not only reshaped NASA’s perspective on our planet but also fueled the growing environmental movement, highlighting Earth’s beauty and fragility.

“We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth,” Anders later said of his journey. “Earth was the only thing in color. Everything else was black or white. It was the only thing that had any life to it.”

Now, more than 50 years later, a new photograph taken from the Moon’s surface offers a strikingly different perspective. This latest image, known as the Blue Ghost photo, shows Earth as a small, gray speck suspended in the vastness of space, drifting beyond the Moon’s desolate horizon.

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