Earth Day 2026 – perspectives from earth & space !!

Happy Earth Day 2026 !! Spring set in early in the mountain west of the US this year, and trees and bulbs started blooming weeks before they usually do. And then there was a snow storm and seasons collided. This tulip in my backyard with its snow cover caught my attention to the beauty, fragility and the toughness of life on our planet.
The incredible thing is that the oxygen rich air we breathe, the weather that sustains clouds, brings rain and keeps us protected from the intense UV radiation of the Sun is all due to a thin sheath of atmosphere surrounding us like a life sustaining protective blanket.
Many of the natural scenes we enjoy and cherish, viz. brilliant sunsets, snow-covered forests, to name a few, all happen right above the earth’s surface in that thin atmospheric layer which we get a better perspective of its relative size when viewed from space.

This is an image taken by astronauts in the International space station, which truly shifts the perspective on reality of this thin layer of atmosphere and its crucial role in sustaining life on earth and how important it is to protect our atmosphere.

After the recent historic Artemis II mission earlier this month, with humans revisiting the Moon after 53 years, the entire world is still awed by the spectacular jaw-dropping images not just of the Moon but of the ‘blue marble’, our planet earth, suspended in a vast darkness that space is. A few quotes from Artemis crew who captured the Earthset during their lunar fly by and by the astronauts of Apollo 8 after the first ever photo captured of the earth from space by astronaut Bill Anders in 1968, cements the uniqueness of our home, the planet Earth and how fortunate we are to inhabit this planet and why its in the best interest of humanity to protect this home of ours !!

“We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth” Bill Anders Apollo 8 astronaut, after he took the historic image of Earthrise
Incidentally, this image was a catalyst in the environmental movement and creation of the Earth Day !!

“The Earth was the only thing in the entire Universe that had any color, it was a remarkable sight – we’re very, very fortunate to live on this planet.” commander of Apollo 8, Frank Borman

“You are special, in all of this emptiness. This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.”
“Trust us, you look amazing, you look beautiful,” Glover said on April 2. “And from up here, you also look like one thing. Homo sapiens, all of us, no matter where you’re from or what you look like, we’re all one people.”
Artemis II pilot Victor Glover reflects on our shared spaceship: Earth

“When we burned toward the Moon, I said that we do not leave Earth — but we choose it. We will explore. We will build ships and visit again. But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.” Christina Koch, mission specialist & astronaut Artemis II

Ending reflections on this earth day from the famous quote from Carl Sagan in 1960, after his brilliant insight to recommend turning Voyager 1 one last time towards earth from 3.7 billion miles away to glimpse of our planet –  Sagan on the image-Pale Blue Dot
“That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives… on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
“we, as a species, have nowhere else to go “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” Lets work together to preserve and pass on this bounty of Nature to generations to come, that’s a legacy worth leaving behind.