Launch of Apollo 11, on the Saturn V Rocket, High Angle View, July 16, 1969. See more photos from NASA’s collection at The Commons on Flickr.

The easiest and perhaps most poignant way that NASA has connected the public with space exploration is through photography. Breathtaking photos of our first Earthrise, Hubble’s extended gaze to the ends of the universe and brilliant studies of activity on our sun show us how much exists that we have yet to explore, things we couldn’t even imagine until the photons hit film and CCD chips and were displayed for our relatively Earthbound eyes.

As a government agency, NASA’s images have always been freely available to the public, but with the advent of the internet, we now have better access than ever before. In 2007, NASA partnered with Internet Archive to launch NASAImages.org, a searchable, downloadable database containing most of the agency’s photos and videos. Last week, however, NASA announced an exciting, interactive venture with The Commons on Flickr.

Many institutions — The Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, even the D.C. Public Library — have already partnered with The Commons to share public photo databases and, most importantly, make them available for viewers to share notes and comments, with the hope of discovering new information or creating a deeper historical story around the image.

Bookmark and spend some time with NASA on The Commons here. The space exploration agency already has many other frequently updated Flickr feeds, such as NASA: 2Explore, NASA Goddard, Desert RATS, and Headquarters.