HOUSTON — Officials at NASA confirmed Friday that the Earth remains a roughly spherical, predominantly blue marble, according to the first high-resolution images downlinked from the Artemis II mission’s $20.4 billion Orion capsule.

The image, titled 'Hello, World,' was captured by Mission Commander Reid Wiseman using a Nikon D5. The photograph provides the first 45-megapixel confirmation since 1972 that the Atlantic Ocean is still located exactly where the previous generation left it, despite several decades of geopolitical shifts and the occasional pandemic.

'It’s a powerful reminder that no matter how much we spend to leave, we are still one world,' said a NASA spokesperson, standing in a mission control center that cost more than the annual GDP of several countries visible in the frame. 'From 100,000 miles up, you can’t see the poverty, the crumbling infrastructure, or the fact that this specific photo cost approximately $1.2 billion per megapixel. You just see a pale blue dot and the green aurora we’ve been tweeting about for three hours.'

According to mission logs, the four-person crew was so 'glued to the windows' that Commander Wiseman had to contact Houston to request official procedures for cleaning facial oil and nose-prints off the spacecraft’s quad-pane thermal glass. The smudges, described by engineers as 'human-induced optical interference,' were reportedly the only thing obscuring the view of a planet that has not significantly changed its color palette since the Apollo era.

While the crew expressed 'breathtaking' awe at the sight of the Western Sahara and the Iberian Peninsula, critics noted that the 'spectacular' view is virtually identical to the one available 24/7 on Google Earth, albeit with significantly higher fuel consumption.

'We’ve successfully proven that if you throw enough money at a rocket, you can eventually see where you used to live,' said an Archives Section analyst. 'It’s a triumph of human spirit and extremely expensive optics.'

At press time, the crew was reportedly preparing to take a similar 'breathtaking' photo of the Moon, a celestial body that is expected to remain grey.