Earthrise
Our "grand oasis" as seen from Apollo to Artemis
I hope y’all had a fabulous Christmas! The crew of Apollo 8 certainly did when they saw this view of Earth on Christmas Eve, 1968. NASA released this video for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8, which shows how the Apollo spacecraft was oriented while orbiting the Moon. It really gives you a perspective on the chance nature of this historical photo.
Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders brought back incredible photos of the Earth when they became the first humans to orbit the Moon 54 years ago. Since the historic flight of Apollo 8, other crews were able to capture other unique “Earthrise” images.
The montage below shows Earthrise images from Apollo 8-17. The Apollo astronauts used Hasselblad cameras, which were all manually operated, a testament to their training and dedication. Listen to Lovell calling out camera exposure settings during the video I embedded above.
NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, an uncrewed test flight that orbited the Moon in a unique Distant Retrograde Orbit, brought back even more incredible views of Earth and the Moon.
For Artemis 1, NASA relied on an off-the-shelf solution, normally used by sports action enthusiasts, that had “been highly modified for use in space, providing a view of the spacecraft exterior.” A GoPro Hero 4 Black camera captured this image of the Orion spacecraft, complete with the NASA “Worm” logo in the foreground with the Moon and Earth in the distant background. The unique orbit during the Artemis 1 mission enabled this incredible vantage point, which was further away from Earth than any of the Apollo missions ever went.
Sixteen cameras onboard the Orion spacecraft captured incredible views of this uncrewed test mission. Check out this picture of the lunar far side.
You can view the full gallery here. There are also some videos, but they aren’t the full resolution. Bandwidth constraints meant many files weren’t sent back to Earth during the mission. I will be sure to let everyone know once I see the full-resolution files. One last view of a crescent Earthrise before the end of today’s email. I’ll catch you on the flip side.
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I can't watch that Apollo 8 Earthrise recreation enough. I wonder if any subsequent missions got a photo framed by the round center hatch window matching the view Lovell had. And that's a cool photo montage from the other missions. It's interesting to see the difference in Earth phases that occurred from mission to mission.