1. First image of Earth from Space Thanks to the Germans, the U.S. acquired the capability to make suborbital flights with repurposed V-2 rockets shortly after World War II. On October 24, 1946, a V-2 carrying a 35mm camera reached an altitude of 65 miles, snapping pics the whole way up. The rocket had no parachute, and ultimately plowed into the New Mexico desert at 300 miles an hour, but the film was protected with a steel casing. Inside was this picture, the first ever taken from space. [Source]

2. First picture of Mars’ Surface Until Mariner 4 flew past Mars on July 14, 1965, we still had hope that there might be intelligent life on the red planet, since ground-based telescopes were simply not powerful enough to explain why Mars’ surface appeared to change with the seasons. When Mariner 4 sent back this picture and others showing ancient, cratered terrain and no atmosphere, it seemed certain that Mars was a dead planet after all. [Source]

4. Blue Marble This striking image of our planet was taken by the astronauts on board Apollo 17 on their way to the Moon on December 7, 1972. It was the first clear image taken of an entire illuminated face of the Earth, and it may be the most widely distributed image in human history, according to NASA. And if you’re wondering why the Earth is upside-down (which you totally should be), it’s because that’s how the Apollo 17 command module was oriented when the picture was taken. [Source]

5. First Close-Up Picture of Jupiter Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter in November of 1973, and immediately started sending back the first high resolution images. These images were broadcast on TV real-time, allowing the public to follow along with the Pioneer science team and share in their excitement, and the Pioneer Program actually won an Emmy for the presentation. [Source]

6. First Close-Up Picture of Venus The first spacecraft to fly by Venus was Mariner 2 in December of 1962, which made it the first spacecraft to have a close encounter with another planet. Astronomers knew that Venus was covered in clouds, though, so they didn’t bother putting a camera on the spacecraft. It wasn’t until Mariner 10 made a flyby in 1974 that we got the first detailed pics back, and an ultraviolet filter brought out a surprising amount of detail of the Venusian clouds. [Source]

7. First Close-Up Picture of Mercury It seems like Mercury would be easy to get to since you’re heading in towards the sun’s gravity well, but it’s the opposite: to catch up to Mercury, a spacecraft has to increase its velocity by about 40,000 miles per hour, since Mercury orbits much faster than Earth does. Mariner 10 only manged to swing by Mercury in 1974, not enter orbit, but it sent back this set of pictures, the first showing Mercury’s surface in detail. [Source]

8. First Picture from Venus In 1975, before we ever made it to Mars, the Soviets landed a probe on Venus called Venera 9. Venus is a nasty place, and the probe only survived on the surface for 53 minutes, but that was long enough for it to send back this picture, which is the first picture ever sent back to Earth from another planet. [Source]

9. First picture from Mars Viking 1 landed on Mars on July 20, 1976. 25 seconds after touchdown, it started transmitting this picture, and four minutes later, we had our first glimpse of the red planet, in black and white. [Source]

10. First Close-Up Picture of Saturn By the time Pioneer 11 reached Saturn in September of 1979, Voyagers 1 and 2 were already on their way there. Since Saturn was Pioneer 11’s last stop, NASA decided to send the probe through Saturn’s ring plane to see if it survived, to make sure that the Voyagers could take that route. Aside from a near-collision with one of Saturn’s moons, the plan worked, and Pioneer 11 headed out to interstellar space unscathed, but not before taking this image. [Source]

11. First Close-Up Picture of Uranus Uranus is not a planet we hear about that much, save for as the butt of dirty astronomy jokes. It’s way the heck out there, the second most distant planet from our sun, and is notable for having an axial tilt of over 90 degrees, meaning that it’s north pole is pointed more or less right at the sun. Voyager 2 swung past Uranus in 1986 and snapped this picture, showing an almost entirely featureless ball of lovely colored gas. [Source]

12. First Close-Up Picture of Neptune Neptune is really freakin’ far away. Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 and didn’t make it out to the most distant planet until 1989, but the pics that it took like this one made the trip worth it for sure. [Source]

13. Pale Blue Dot That little smudge of a pixel is Earth, as seen from the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990. From nearly 4 billion miles away, on its way out of the solar system, the robotic spacecraft turned around and snapped this picture of Earth inside a sunbeam from the farthest point any man-made object has ever reached. As Carl Sagan put it, “all of human history has happened on that tiny pixel, which is our only home.” [Source]

14. Voyager Family Portrait At the same time that Voyager 1 looked back towards Earth to take the Pale Blue Dot picture, it got a good view of the rest of the solar system at the same time. From almost four billion miles “above” the plane in which the planets orbit, Voyager looked down and took this series of 60 pictures, capturing Jupiter, Earth, Venus, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Mercury was too close to the sun and Mars was lost in scattered light, while Pluto, of course, isn’t really a planet. [Source]

15. Hubble Ultra Deep Field For nearly four months, between 2003 and 2004, the Hubble Space Telescope pointed at the deepest, darkest, emptiest little patch of space that it could find, a mere one thirteen millionth of the total area of our sky. The resulting image contains an estimated ten thousand galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, and their light has taken thirteen billion years to reach us, making this the furthest back in time we’ve ever seen in the visible spectrum. If any one single picture communicates the scale of the universe and how utterly insignificant we are, this has to be it. [Source]

17. First Images from Titan On January 14th, 2005, a little probe called Huygens achieved both the first landing anywhere in the outer solar system and the most distant landing from Earth when it touched down on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. The surface is made of something orange, possibly ice sand, with rocky chunks of water ice and a methane atmosphere. The probe survived on the surface for about 90 minutes. [Source]

18. First Picture of an Alien Planet We’ve just barely scratched the surface of our own solar system, but already we’re starting to see actual pictures of planets around alien stars. Released in 2008, this Hubble image shows a planet named Fomalhaut B orbiting its star. This is the first image of its kind, but there will undoubtedly be many, many more. [Source]

16. Earth from Mars’ surface On the 63rd day of its mission in March of 2004, the Spirit rover looked up from the surface of Mars to take this picture of Earth just before sunrise. This is the first image taken of Earth from another planet beyond the Moon. We sure are tiny, aren’t we? [Source]

3. First picture from the Moon Americans may have been the first people to walk on the moon, but the Soviets were the first to manage a soft landing there. After 11 soft landing attempts that ended in failure, a probe called Luna 9 used a little airbag to cushion itself to a stop on the lunar surface. It sent back this TV picture on February 3, 1966, which was intercepted by the British and published in a tabloid before the Soviets ever got around to making them public. This is the first image of Earth from another planetary body. [Source]