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| Early Days Gerard Kuiper Early Graduate Students Telescopes & Research |
Ranger | Lunar Orbiter | Surveyor I | Apollo |
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Robert Strom The first picture of Earth from space was not taken by the astronauts. It was taken by the orbiter. It got the horizon, and there was the Earth. It was not in color, it was in black and white, but there was the Earth. That was the first picture of the Earth ever taken from a great distance. It was amazing. Now the public really didn’t know about that photograph very much. But when the astronauts returned the first pictures of the Earth from the Moon—that was Apollo 8—it kind of shocked people. The reason it shocked people: Here was this little blue marble sitting there in black space, and you could hardly see the atmosphere. Then I think it dawned on people, wow, we live in a precarious environment, and the only thing separating us from death is this thin atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen. Charles Sonett There was one very interesting picture especially, taken from the Moon. You could see the oceans of the Earth, and the clouds. That’s something to think about. That’s worth contemplating. |
Don McCarthy You put a picture of the whole Earth from space in your class, and you ask the audience when they saw that. Young people cannot answer that. You cannot answer that, most likely, because you’ve grown up with it. Whereas people my age saw the transition, of being able to see part of the Earth to the whole Earth. It is speculated that that new view of the Earth as a whole from space inspired the whole environmental movement, and certainly has changed the way generations of people around the globe think of themselves as fitting into the universe. Not just one locale; now we think globally. What price do you put on a single picture that had that impact? It’s priceless. Alan Binder I don’t think it was so much seeing the Earth from the Moon: It was being on the Moon. Man was up there. You could look up, and people were up there. Because I had my telescope, I would look at the landing site and see the mountains and see the craters and I knew there were people down there. I could look in the window at the television and see those mountains. That was an amazing connection to me. |
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