Answer: Apollo 17 team

The photograph was taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts (Cernan, Evans and Schmitt) on December 7, 1972, at 05:39 a.m. EST. this was the first ever NASA mission that allowed for a full view of the earth from space as the astronauts had the Sun behind them when they took the image. It looked like a giant glass marble and hence it was named the Blue marble.

Since then, many photos of the Earth have been taken, but what makes this one special is that it was taken by humans. Apollo 17 was the last human flight into space and hence all photos taken since then have been via unmanned space craft.

Image credit: Public domain, NASA,Wikicommons

The above image looks very similar to the large shot shown above, but with a slight difference. It’s actually upside down showing Asia at the bottom (Northern hemisphere) and Africa at the top (Southern hemisphere), but this is how it was actually photographed; it’s just that it was rotated when published so that we could see the Earth as how we imagine it.

Image credit: NASA, Wikicommons