The crew then turned their eyes towards the Earth. Astronaut Richard Gordon commented that he could see "the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico; Baja California is in plain sight. It's a pretty nice day down there. The Gulf - The Western Gulf of Mexico has a cloud coverage along the coast; looks like it's almost up to Houston. It's South and West of it." He also said the bad weather they flew through at launch had moved out into the Atlantic.

Bean: The Earth doesn't seem to be getting smaller too fast right now, but it is sort of funny. It just seems to hang out there. It doesn't - You can't see it rotate, you can't see it move or anything. It just sort of hangs out there in this black space, and the moon just doesn't seem to be any bigger than it was when we left, but it looks more like a sphere also. It sort of looks like a ball that is being hung out there somehow. It's really crazy.

That sub-solar point is over the water now, and it glints on the surface of the Earth just like a light on a billiard ball or something. There is a little spot there that gives you a little specular reflection, and then it's got a bright halo, or just a bright area, around it. It looks like we can see the coast of China and Japan now. It's kind of hard to tell. You can see red Earth pretty well, but if there's greens or grays, it is very difficult to discern them from the blues.