It was 45 years ago today that NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 snapped several photos of the Earth while the craft was orbiting the moon. It’s our first real glimpse of the Earth from such a vantage point.
In the 1940s and 1950s, other spacecraft took photos of the Earth, but they captured only part of the planet. These Lunar Orbiter images are known for their larger, planetary view. One memorable image shows the Earth rising over the horizon of the moon.
The Lunar Orbiter 1 was a floating space photography lab whose mission was to capture images of the moon’s surface in preparation for the first moon landing. The fact that the vessel caught these stunning images of the Earth was icing on the cake. [NASA via Inside Science]