The most recent Landsat satellite, Landsat 9, was launched on 27 September 2021.

In 1977, the first real time satellite imagery was acquired by the United States's KH-11 satellite system. Also in 1972 the United States started the Landsat program, the largest program for acquisition of imagery of Earth from space. The Blue Marble photograph was taken from space in 1972, and has become very popular in the media and among the public. The first satellite photographs of the Moon might have been made on October 6, 1959, by the Soviet satellite Luna 3, on a mission to photograph the far side of the Moon. The first satellite (orbital) photographs of Earth were made on August 14, 1959, by the U.S. With an apogee of 65 miles (105 km), these photos were from five times higher than the previous record, the 13.7 miles (22 km) by the Explorer II balloon mission in 1935. The U.S-launched V-2 flight on October 24, 1946, took one image every 1.5 seconds. The first images from space were taken on sub-orbital flights. At the time, the satellite was crossing Mexico. The photo was taken when the satellite was about 17,000 mi (27,000 km) above the surface of the earth on August 14, 1959. The first crude image taken by the satellite Explorer 6 shows a sunlit area of the Central Pacific Ocean and its cloud cover.

Earth satellite view