Feature image: Earthrise, the 1968 Photo That Changed The World:’More than 50 years after it was shot, Earthrise continues to be seen as one of the most iconic environmental photographs ever taken … More >>
2026 Artemis Update: How our planet has changed since 1968 : https://theconversation.com/earthrise-to-earthset-how-the-planets-climate-has-changed-since-the-photo-that-inspired-the-environmental-movement-279818
Planetary Good is a forthcoming IAT category to celebrate the most inspiring efforts small Inland communities are making to heal some of the damage we humans are doing to our planet’s natural life support systems.
Many of us are old enough to remember those thrilling images of Planet Earth taken during the Apollo Missions, such as Earthrise captured in 1968 by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, for example: our small life-filled orb rising over its lifeless moon. ‘We set out to explore the moon and instead discovered the Earth,’ Anders later commented.
The Overview Effect
For Bill Anders, seeing our planet rising over the barren moon was deeply emotional and transformative. We now call this experience the Overview Effect. More >>
Another Apollo astronaut, Ron Garan, describes the Overview Effect in this video:
In 1972, NASA’s Apollo 17 mission gave us another unforgettable image: The Blue Marble. Nearly two decades later, in 1990, the Voyager I space probe captured yet another defining photo of our planet: The Pale Blue Dot.
The Voyager I image has been rhapsodised many times, including, most memorably, by astronomer and planetary scientist Carl Sagan:
Look again at that 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. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. More >>
Sagan continues:
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. 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.
IAU’s Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD)
Planetary Good, as an IAT Category, is also inspired by the International Astronomical Union’s Office of Astronomy for Development and, in particular, by a visionary essay, Astronomy as a strategic driver for sustainable development, published in Nature Astronomy (June 2025):
The ethos of the International Astronomical Union’s Office of Astronomy for Development is to direct astronomy towards addressing urgent societal needs. …
In a world grappling with widening inequality, climate instability, and the urgent demand for inclusive growth, the tools of development must evolve. Among the most unexpected yet profoundly impactful of these tools is astronomy. Long perceived as the scientific domain of distant stars, galaxies and abstract theories, astronomy is increasingly being recognized for its transformative potential here on Earth.
The OAD was founded on a bold premise: that the curiosity, wonder, and technical precision of astronomy can be purposefully directed to address urgent societal needs — from education and health to gender equity and economic opportunity. Drawing on the interdisciplinary nature of astronomy, astronomical expertise can be integrated into development to align with the United Nations’ call for integrated progress across the economic, social, and environmental pillars of sustainable development (United Nations General Assembly 2015). … Ultimately, the aim is to leverage the resources and expertise of astronomy to contribute meaningfully towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs were established as a universal blueprint for peace and prosperity with the aim to tackle urgent global issues by 2030, and serve as a roadmap to ensure a better future for people and the planet.
Mdhluli, J.E., Takalana, C., Venugopal, R. et al. Astronomy as a strategic driver for sustainable development. Nature Astronomy (June 2025) View here >>
Celebrating the good stuff, not the bad
Many of us feel great grief, sadness, loss, even despair about what we humans are doing to our planet’s life-support systems and to one another. We also know that such emotions can be personally destabilising and disempowering; that too much bad news can threaten our long-term mental health, motivation, creativity, and capacities to bring about regenerative change.
Which is why we’re celebrating the good stuff you’ll see along the IAT instead of repeating all the sad, bad news about the damage we’re doing to our home planet and to one another! We’ll be inviting you to check out some of the most inspiring initiatives in rural communities that take us closer to our ultimate destination of ecological sustainability and planetary health.
Earth Observation Satellites
We know about the sad bad stuff from our everyday lived experience and from the thousands of images transmitted to us daily by the Earth Observation satellites now orbiting our planet. (See a list of some of them here >>) But these satellites also send us good news from time to time, the slight improvements we’re making to effect regenerative change.
Much of this data is received by the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex and is freely available through Geoscience Australia and the Earth Observing Dashboard. You might also like to see CSIRO’s importance of Earth Observation data >>
Satellite images are used for many different purposes, as CSIRO’s Centre for Earth Observation’s case studies and Geoscience Australia‘s Digital Earth Australia show. So check them out too!
And don’t forget to celebrate the Planetary Good you witness or participate in along the IAT! All the efforts we humans are making to heal our home, our ‘pale blue dot’, our ‘mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’ …
(For a fuller list of anthropogenic threats, see Planetary Health Checklist by Planetary Boundaries Science, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Carbon Majors database.
Page published 8 February 2025. Last updated 22 October, 2025.
Permalink: https://inlandastrotrail.com/planetary-good/