Lovely Image from Space: Earth, Moon and Approaching Spacecraft

By Nancy Atkinson - December 31, 2012 at 5:16 PM UTC | Planetary Science

Earth, Moon and Soyuz. Credit: NASA/Kevin Ford.

This one might have to be added to the group of iconic images from space. On December 21, a Soyuz spacecraft carrying new crewmembers approached the International Space Station. Commander Kevin Ford, already on the ISS, took this image showing the Moon above, bright blue Earth below and the Soyuz coming into view. "Science fiction into fact," said Canadian Chris Hadfield, who was on board the Soyuz, along with Roman Romanenko and Tom Marshburn.

By the way, if you aren't following Chris Hadfield on

Twitter

or

Facebook

, you really should. He's posting several images and lots of updates daily of what his life is like on board the space station. You can read about his training

in our series of articles

about it, and we plan to keep following Hadfield's mission and will be writing more about his expedition in 2013.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com