June 11, 2026: Official Photos

Did you know?

While exploring Flickr and engaging with this week's topics of intellectual property, privacy, and copyright, I was thinking about pictures and their role in media.

Pictures are a great way to bring certain topics to attention and spread messages. They serve as long-term records that help people reflect on issues, change, place, and responsibility. The importance and significance of good images is well known even in science. In fact, NASA’s Artemis II astronauts completed photography training to capture great images of Earth from space. 

One of my favorite pictures is Earthrise, the famous photograph taken by William Anders during the 1968 Apollo 8 mission. 

Earthrise - credit: NASA

The image shows Earth rising above the Moon’s horizon. It sparked the movement for environmental sustainability and shows that humanity shares one home and one collective responsibility to protect it. It also reminds us that Earth’s resources are finite and that environmental challenges transcend national borders and cultural differences. One of my favorite images and messages!

Since then, the image has been shared, used, and "reinvented" in various ways. This creativity is possible because works by the federal government, including NASA space images, can be reused without obtaining copyright permission (see this article). They are automatically placed in the public domain. There is even a website of copyright-free images. However, there are exceptions such as trademarks or logos or substantially new, original adaptations or compilations that use, e.g., NASA images (see U.S. copyright law). Those compilations may gain copyright protection, but the underlying NASA material itself does not.

"Earthset" from recent Artemis II mission - credit: NASA

Considering the importance of images, especially in this digital age, platforms like Flickr enable people to continuously document and share diverse perspectives on environmental change, cultural life, and everyday experiences. This can build community, encourage reflection, inspire action, or even initiate transformation for the public good. 

Nevertheless, it is important to remain critical and consider whether such images are AI-generated, digitally manipulated, or edited in ways that remove or alter important elements, as this can affect how accurately they represent the full context of what is being shown. Depending on the source material and the nature of the edits, such alterations may also have copyright or licensing implications.