The images from the Apollo missions will reduce you to tears

When people ask why I’m obsessed with the Apollo moon missions, I always want to reply using the same phrase: ‘Because they were out of this world.’ I never do, because it happens to sound like a very bad joke. But it’s the truth. For the first time ever, mankind left its home turf and discovered somewhere new. It was qualitatively the greatest journey in human history. Not — and this is the point — that it was mankind rejecting that home turf; leaving the Earth made us value it all the more. That’s where the greatness lay. It’s also the charm of a new exhibition in London.

Encountering the Astronomical Sublime: Vintage Nasa Photographs 1961–1980 at Breese Little in Clerkenwell covers, as the dates will tell you, more than just the Apollo landings (which lasted from only 1969 to 1972). There are shots of an early spacewalk undertaken by Ed White, of the surface of Mars captured by the unmanned Mariner probe, even of far-flung Jupiter taken by Voyager 2. But the most powerful images are those of Earth. You can go on the most incredible journey in the world, but the moment that really blows your mind is when you turn round and look towards home. The Apollo 8 astronauts were the first people ever to leave Earth’s orbit and travel to the moon — yet what moved them more than anything was gazing back over those quarter of a million miles and seeing their home planet hanging in space. It was said to look like a blue marble. This is now the nickname given to their photos, the famous ‘Earthrise’ shots which are always the priciest of the Nasa images that come up for sale.

But not even these shots, as Josephine Breese of the gallery explains, are going to break many pockets.