Our Best Pictures of the Apollo Missions & Space at Large

And space is large. It’s a place of unknown proportions, and the lines of scientific inquiry and exploration are far-reaching. Since the first lunar landing 50 years ago, we have mapped the surfaces of the Moon, Mars and Venus with greater detail and ease than most of the places on the floor of Earth’s oceans. We have entered an era that endeavors to turn the cosmos into a commodity with space tourism startups. Human colonization of space no longer seems like an unworkable Sci-Fi theory but actually an active area of research and complicated possibility. We have witnessed the first image of a supermassive black hole, assembled by cooperating telescopes stationed around the world. There is a growing layer of space trashorbiting around Earth, and the first protest in space was mounted in 2017 by the Autonomous Space Agency Network.

We offer no conclusions to this chaos. However, we have offered some pretty spectacular photographs from the astronauts in NASA’s Apollo missions, as well as images from their earlier and later pursuits, and some non-astronauts too.

Not enough space for you? Here’s a fun piece of Swann trivia: in a 2008 Space Exploration auction, aptly numbered sale 2001, we sold a toothbrush from the Apollo 11 mission for $18,400.