STS-42, 1991

The Michael Helfert: Viewing Earth from Space Collection consists of over 26,000 true-color and infrared photographs taken from space of Earth between 1961 and 1998 along with supporting printed documents. All films in the collection are second generation films and were reproduced from a small number of selected flight film originals at Helfert's specification for his use as teaching and briefing resources.

The purpose of this collection is to document global change processes, change velocities, and tendencies over the last four decades of the twentieth century and to support multi-disciplinary research and teaching in environmental change studies. This collection serves as an objective photographic history of Earth since 1961.

Of particular interest are the images in Series V: Photography. This series includes approximately 23,500 super slides (70 mm or 2.25" x 2.25") that cover the best photography acquired during every Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab, Space Shuttle, and Space Shuttle-Mir mission from 1961 to 1996. Helfert believes these images may be the only set in existence to cover all known areas of environmental change over the face of the earth. Also included are approximately 3,300 4" x 6" contact transparencies of mixed flights made on 200 mm color transparency film base. Helfert believes these to be the only set of direct contact transparencies in existence since there is no longer a NASA photo lab to produce them.