To know the history of the first photograph of our planet we have to go back to the end of the 60s. During the Cold War the USA and the Soviet Union played their particular game of chess on the world board.
Some of the most important moves of that game were played in what would be known as the “space race”, a stubborn struggle between two powers whose final goal was to reach the Moon. From this fight, in which both nations sought to demonstrate their military and technological superiority over the adversary, a hegemonic power on a global level would result.
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The space race, relatively brief in historical terms, was intense and highly contested. Finally after an exorbitant investment by both countries, harsh political and propaganda campaigns, more than 20 missions and the death of 23 astronautsthe competition ended in victory for the Americans with The Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. “One small step for man, one giant step for humanity“.
Witnesses of a blue world
The story of one of the first images of Earthwhich took place a few months before. On December 21, 1968, NASA’s Apollo 8 mission successfully took off from Cape Canaveral in FloridaUnited States, thanks to a multi-stage expendable space rocket called Saturn V. His crew members, subjected ton hard training of 84,000 hours and that lasted more than 10 yearswere prepared for almost any eventuality except one: the superb image of our planet suspended in space.
Frank Borman, Jim Lovell y Bill Anders They were the first human beings to leave the zone of influence of Earth’s gravity, orbit the Moon and fly over its hidden side. Apollo 8 took 3 days to reach its destination and orbited around it for about 20 hours, until it managed to circle ten times.
Ironically, During the first 3 laps of the satellite the ship kept its back to the Earth. It was not until circling the Moon for the fourth time that Commander Frank Borman, following the mission’s flight plan, arranged the maneuver that would orient the ship towards Earth, allowing them to be the first to contemplate the blue planet in all its splendor from space.
Planet Earth, our home in the Universe
“The Earthrise”
Bill Anders would immortalize the moment. The snapshot was captured during Christmas Eve 1968. Named The Earthrisein its translation into Spanish Dawn of the Earth, The photograph would show a world emerging from the darkness of space on a lunar landscape illuminated by the Sun. It showed the strong contrast between the gray, desolate, static and lifeless landscape of the Moon and the friendly blue and white orb of the fertile Earth; an oasis of heat and life in the middle of a barren, cold and hostile desert.
Not in vain, already in 1948, the prestigious British cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle correctly predicted that The first images of Earth from space would forever change the human conception of our planet. So it was. The image became an iconic reminder of the loneliness of our splendidly isolated and delicately fragile world. Thus “Earthrise” gIt had a great impact on public consciousness and over time, it would become the icon of multiple environmental movements.
Since then, althoughOnly a few privileged people have been able to contemplate the Earth as a whole from spacethe image of the blue planet has been captured on multiple occasions and from various corners of the solar system.
We have selected some that, due to the context in which they were taken, marked a before and after in the adventures of Homo sapiens beyond the atmosphere that protects them; a change in the conception of the world in which he lives. A complete cure of humility for a species that lives immersed in its own reality, and never better said in its particular blue bubble.and that sometimes, acting as owner and lord of everything, forgets the fragility of the planet in the middle of the vast universe.
2024-03-04 12:59:22
#review #historical #photos #Earth #space
