This Day in American History: August 23rd - The First Photo of Earth from the Moon (1966)
- For America
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On this day in 1966, an unmanned American spacecraft snapped a photo nobody had asked it to take -- and gave humanity its first-ever look at Earth from the distance of the Moon.
Lunar Orbiter 1 launched from Cape Canaveral on August 10, 1966, becoming the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon four days later. Built by Boeing, its actual mission had nothing to do with Earth at all -- it was designed to photograph smooth, flat stretches of the lunar surface, scouting potential landing sites for the robotic Surveyor probes and, eventually, the crewed Apollo missions still three years away. Its camera system, borrowed from a National Reconnaissance Office spy-satellite design that stayed classified for decades, could develop and scan its own film and beam the images back to Earth.
The photo of Earth wasn't in the original flight plan at all. Mission controllers made a spur-of-the-moment decision to redirect the spacecraft's camera toward Earth during its 16th orbit on August 23, 1966, and the resulting image, transmitted to a NASA tracking station near Madrid, Spain, showed roughly half the planet -- a crescent stretching from Istanbul to Cape Town, with everything further east cloaked in darkness -- captured from about 236,000 miles away. It was fuzzy and low-resolution by any modern standard, but it was something no human being had ever seen before: home, from someone else's front porch.
The original full-resolution data was never fully recovered at the time and sat archived on aging magnetic tapes for more than 40 years, until NASA's Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project tracked down the last surviving vintage tape drives, restored them using a mix of 1960s-era parts and modern electronics, and finally extracted a sharper version of the image in 2008. Lunar Orbiter 1 went on to photograph roughly 75% of its intended targets before mission controllers deliberately crashed it into the far side of the Moon that October, clearing the way for later orbiters -- and for the Apollo astronauts who'd follow a few years later.
Also on This Day in History
1784 — Western North Carolina Counties Declare the Breakaway State of Franklin
Four counties in what would become eastern Tennessee attempt to form their own state; it lasts only a few years and is never admitted to the Union.
1864 — The Union Navy Captures Fort Morgan, Alabama
The victory breaks Confederate control of the last major port on the Gulf of Mexico.
1927 — Sacco and Vanzetti Are Executed
The Italian-born anarchists are executed in Boston after a controversial trial that drew international attention.
1936 — 17-Year-Old Bob Feller Strikes Out 15 in His First Game
The future Hall of Famer announces himself in his major-league debut for the Cleveland Indians.
1942 — Walter Johnson Pitches to Babe Ruth in a War-Relief Exhibition
The pregame attraction draws 69,000 fans to a Yankees-Senators game and raises $80,000 for Army-Navy relief.
Source: NASA, The Planetary Society
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