The First Images of Earth from Space: A History of Milestones and Discoveries

Jakarta –

The images of the Earth from space that we have seen so far are a long process done by scientists for a long time. The process of photographing the Earth began in 1946, from blurry to clear images.

Taking pictures of the Earth from space was difficult and he had to launch a missile. The resulting images are experiments from different perspectives and thousands of kilometers from Earth.

How to take pictures of Earth for the first time

In 1946, a major milestone in space exploration occurred when a 35-millimeter motion picture camera took the first images of the Earth from space every one and a half seconds.

Just on October 24, 1946, the camera was launched by a V-2 missile from the White Sands Missile Range in the United States. This marks the official crossing of the Kármán line, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, as reported from Business today.

Even though the missile landed suddenly and hit the ground at a speed exceeding 547 km per hour, the film wrapped with steel tape miraculously survived. This can then store historical images of the Earth.

Research for Atmospheric Research

After World War II, the United States Army again used German V-2 missiles for scientific research, including atmospheric research and the development of missile defenses.

Equipped with scientific instruments, these redesigned rockets embarked on various missions between 1946 and 1950, capturing more than 1,000 images of the Earth from an altitude of more than 160 kilometers.

Cited from the site NASAon August 14, 1959, the Explorer 6 satellite took the first picture of Earth from an orbit as high as about 27,359 km, but the results lacked detail.

Then on April 1, 1960, the weather satellite TIROS-1 returned images of the Earth from an orbital height of about 724 km with sufficient quality for weather forecasting, according to the main purpose of the satellite itself.

The image of the Earth as a full disk itself was successfully taken by the Soviet communications satellite Molniya 1-3 on 30 May 1966, albeit with less than ideal results.

The camera was also added by Clyde Holliday. The camera is designed for space imaging. Clyde’s camera was instrumental in capturing the first ever image of Earth from space when a V-2 missile was launched at the White Sands Missile Range.

Returning the images to Earth, Clyde Holliday and his team performed a careful analysis. They produce valuable insights into geology, meteorology, and the field of imaging itself.

As technology advanced and the Apollo astronauts embarked on lunar missions, cameras captured iconic and more detailed images of Earth. This image is able to reveal the complex features of the Earth.

Pictures of the earth from the moon

In scientific research, images of the Earth have also been taken from the Moon. The photo was taken on April 30, 1967 by the Surveyor 3 robotic lander that was revisited by the Apollo 12 astronauts.

The Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s produced thousands of amazing photographs. Among them are pictures that show how small and fragile the Earth is in the middle of the darkness and vastness of space.

The most famous photo is the Earthrise photo taken by Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the Moon in December 1968.

In July 1969, the first manned mission to the moon, Apollo 11, returned many iconic images of Nel A. Armstrong and Edwin E. An image taken in December was the famous image of the blue marble Earth that can be seen we often on the Internet. 1972 with Apollo 17 of a distance of 115,872 km on the journey to the Moon.

Meanwhile, on March 8, 2004, the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit showed a sight on Earth that looked like just a bright star. Then 12 years ago, the Moon and Earth were photographed simultaneously during the unmanned Artemis I mission from a distance of 432 km from Earth.

Watch video”The reason is that the outer space is dark even though there is sun“

(doing/doing)