Our Moon follows an elliptical path around the Earth, getting as close as 363,000 km and as far as 405,000 km. This means the Earth would get bigger and smaller in the sky.

The mission aims to collect samples from the near-Earth asteroid 2016 HO3 and explore the main-belt comet 311P.

This image of Earth from lunar orbit was acquired by NASA 's Moon Mineralogy Mapper aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Brown) The blue marble never loses its appeal.

Earth is a little left of center in the image, and our moon is just below Earth. The Curiosity rover snapped the photo on Jan. 31, 2014. [ Read the Full Story Behind the Photos Here ] ...

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968, and in a live broadcast from lunar orbit, showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from ...

Since then, the vehicle—equipped with 16 cameras on its exterior and interior—has flown by the lunar surface and captured various stunning images of both the moon and Earth.

The distance between the Earth and Moon is in reality about 30 times the diameter of Earth, or about 230,000 miles (370,000 km). The image below shows the distance of the Earth and Moon to scale.

See Earth's ancient companion like never before with this gallery of incredible satellite, telescope and lunar orbiter images of the moon. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn ...

Stunning new images of the moon have been beamed back to Earth from the European Space Agency’s Juice mission showing some sign of real colour differences on the lunar surface.

In this image, the far side of the moon is seen illuminated by the sun. The Earth, in the distance, is 1 million miles away from NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera, which snapped the picture.