The first of these "Moon and Planet" images came just weeks before the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon. Those photographs inspired the public to look to space as the next logical objective of human exploration. Many hoped that NASA and the Soviet Union could collaborate on space exploration, and share the exploration of the solar system with all nations. The second image was taken by Michael Collins, as he watched the ascent stage re-enter the atmosphere of the Earth and then fall back to the surface. He could not see the ascent stage as he waited in the command module, but in the third image, he took a picture of the Earth rising over the limb of the Earth. He used it as a map to work out where to go to catch up with the ascent stage. Astronaut photograph ISS008-E-13365 was acquired on July 23, 2013, with a Nikon D4 digital camera using an 1150 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 37 crew. Image Credit: NASA/JSC Collins would leave Earth orbit with three moon pictures. From that experience he had an inkling about what would happen in 1971 when Apollo 15 astronauts would take pictures of the moon. He knew a moonwalk would occur, but he did not know what it would look like. Collins said he had a feeling that the images would be "beautiful" and then decided to think about them. In a phone interview he said he did not know if the moon would look like the Earth, and did not know how it would look like. "But I knew it was going to be lovely and I knew that the images, as many of the scientists have said, would be important. And it’s the kind of thing that people would never forget, because it was the first time you saw the Earth from a different place than you had ever seen it, and that is a real wonderful, spectacular thing," he said. [Amazing Space Images From Above (Gallery)] Spaceflight is a lot more difficult than simply landing on the moon, especially for the space agencies in countries other than the United States and Russia. The Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts failed to land safely near its intended location in Kazakhstan. The descent module of Soyuz TMA-06M, which contained the three Expedition 40 astronauts — Russian Oleg Kotov, American T.J. Gaetjens and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield — landed safely near a small town named Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. The Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft's booster did not ignite, and NASA said the Soyuz should not have had enough fuel left to travel to the space station. Gaetjens, who is a veteran of three spaceflights, will now spend three months in quarantine. This is a normal precaution to determine whether the crew members have been exposed to outside contaminants, such as micro-organisms, that may have come into the orbiting space station. The new crew members will make several trips to the space station to determine their level of exposure. Editor's note: If you capture a photo of the Earth rising over the limb of the Earth and would like to share the image with SPACE.com for a possible story or gallery, please send comments and image in to spacephotos@space.com. Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com. Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.