First Picture of the Earth and Moon in a Single Frame
The Great Images in NASA library (GRIN) is an extensive collection of photos from the NASA archives, including ones from the early days of NACA. While perusing the galleries, I found a section of ‘Earth Science’ related photographs that contains some notable first pictures that I wanted to share today. And although I have always heard that one should save the best for last, today we are going to strike that–reverse it, and start with my favorite. This photo was taken on September 18, 1977, by Voyager 1 when it was 7.25 million miles from Earth.
First Picture from Explorer VI Satellite
Next up is the first photo taken by the Explorer VI Earth satellite, launched August 7, 1959. It is a somewhat crude photo, being from so early on in the space program, and NASA was kind enough to include an explanatory illustration as shown below. The lined areas at the left of the globe illustrate the cloud cover at the time of the photo that reflected sunlight to the satellite.
Explanatory Image of the First Explorer VI Picture of Earth
Then we have a photo map of the contiguous 48 states of the United States. This is the first ever assembled from satellite images, and the actual completed map is 10 by 16 feet, and composed of 595 black-and-white images. These were taken, all from the same altitude and with the same lighting angle, by the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS-1).
First Photo of U.S. by NASA Satellite
Last up, but not least, is an image of the whole Earth taken during the Apollo 17 mission, and it just so happens to be the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the South polar ice cap.
Full Earth - First Southern Polar Ice Cap Photo
For more information on each of the images, you can take a look at the Earth Science section of the GRIN. All images courtesy of NASA.
Let's not forget the famous "earthrise" picture taken from Apollo 8 as it was orbiting the moon in December 1968. It had a huge impact at the time – either NBC or CBS used the photo as the lead-off image of its nightly news program for a long time afterward.
<img src="http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/earth/apollo08_earthrise.jpg" width="500/">
On a somewhat related note, one of the participants assembled a summary of How We Spent Spring Break:
[youtube 6tNtdphDB-A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tNtdphDB-A youtube]
That blustery pre-spring weather out on the desert is quite nostalgic. I've been in that same area a couple of times when I was considerably younger. Beautiful country, but colder than a witch's tit this time of year.
That's a pretty good-sized group that you had out there. What did you use for a bog, if I may be so bold? Campers often overlook little things like that, right up until nature calls.
Those big rockets really get up in the sky. Did any of the rocket carry instruments to record their altitude? Do any of the kids try to do multi-stage rockets? They're a bit trickier, but very impressive to watch, and go reeeally high.
I'm very disappointed that there were no explosions. True rocketry demands them (from a safe distance, of course).
My condolences on the balloon. Stiff surface winds and balloons are a poor match.
It looks like you had a fun lab. Is this a yearly thing or a one-off?
We had a much smaller group our first year (this was the fourth), but even so we learned the importance of adequate facilities the first time. We rented two trailers, each with four porta-potties permanently affixed. One (gray) is visible in the background at the far left of the still shot, above, and the other is slightly to its right (blue).
Several of the rockets had accelerometers, strain gauges, and other instruments. We broke mach two, but I haven't heard the results of the altitude calculations.
We had one successful two-stage rocket. It's shown at 2:35 to 3:00. The second stage kicks in at around 2:45. We also had one successful cluster launch, although the less successful cluster at 5:20 to 5:30 is perhaps more entertaining. No explosions this time around, however.
We intend to go back next year.