What 2022 Looked Like From Space

What did Earth look like from space in 2022? It looked beautiful, it looked dangerous. It looked small and inconsequential, it looked incredible.

There were many sources of fabulous images of the Earth from space in 2022, including the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) and existing weather satellites to brand new, hi-res satellites and, uniquely, a spacecraft that briefly flew around the moon.

Here are the best photos of the Earth from space taken in 2022:

The most powerful volcanic eruption since 1883

On Jan. 15, 2022 the GOES-17 satellite captured this timelapse of images of the eruption of the underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in the Pacific Ocean. Hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, it was the most powerful eruption since Krakatoa in 1883. Tsunami waves killed four in Tonga and two in Peru.

City lights over the Mediterranean

In September 2022 European Space Agency astronaut Samatha Cristoforetti on the ISS took this image from 261 miles up looking across the Mediterranean Sea from north Africa to southern Europe. The city lights of Algiers, Algeria to Tunis, Tunisia highlight Africa’s northern coast from the bottom center toward the upper right. From far left, the lights of city-state Monaco to Naples, Italy define the shores of southern Europe. You can also see the French island of Corsica and the Italian island of Sardinia.

The Earth-Moon system from the great beyond

NASA’s long-awaited and much-delayed Artemis-1 mission finally launched in late November 2022, sending back this image of the Earth and the Moon on Nov. 28, 2022 while a whopping 268,563 miles away. That’s farther than any spacecraft designed to send humans to space and back has ever gone before.

China’s Tanggula Mountains

Cristoforetti on the ISS also captured this stunning photo of a portion of China’s Tanggula Mountains near Hala Lake as the ISS orbited 260 miles above the Earth on Sept. 5, 2022.

NASA’s SLS rocket in Florida from the space station

Artemis-1 took many months to get Orion off on its journey around the moon. Even before the many delays and scrubbed launches in summer 2022, NASA was testing its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket out on Pad 39b NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. On March 30, 2022 the ISS was orbiting just off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, about 260 miles above the Atlantic Ocean when Expedition 67 Flight Engineer Raja Chari photographed it.

A sunrise from orbit

The ISS orbits Earth every 92 minutes so the astronauts see 15 or 16 sunrises and sunsets every day. This image from January 2022 shows the first rays of an orbital sunrise as seen from the ISS as it orbited 257 miles above the coast of Venezuela.

Orion captures a whole Earth

In something of a do-over of the classic photograph of the Earth taken on Dec. 7, 1972, by the crew of the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17, NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft snapped this black and white photo of Earth on Nov. 17, 2022 during its successful Artemis-1 mission.

GOES gets a new view on Earth’s western hemisphere

In March 2022, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) launched GOES-18, a new satellite to study storms, extreme weather, the progress of climate change and even incoming “space weather”—and over more than half the globe. Able to scan the Earth five times faster and with four times the resolution of its predecessors. It can track a single storm at full resolution and will help forecasters track and predict thunderstorms, tornadoes, fog, hurricanes, flash floods and other severe weather.

Fall color in New York

On Oct. 8, 2022, the Landsat 9 satellite took this this image showing the deciduous trees and conifers in the Adirondack Mountains—the largest state park in the contiguous United States—in northeast New York.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.