There hasn’t been a new sunlit photo of Earth from outer space since astronauts captured the iconic “blue marble” photo in 1972 – until now.
NASA released the public first image from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (nicknamed DSCOVR) Monday, taken from the craft’s vantage point between the Earth and sun. The satellite completed a journey of about 1 million miles from its launch off a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which begin in February.
It hasn’t been possible to capture images of the entire sunlit side of Earth at once since Apollo 17 took the last photos more than forty years ago, according to a NASA blog post on the new image. While other “blue marble” images have been released since then, they’ve largely been composite images stitched together with photo editing software.
The iconic Blue Marble photo of Earth, taken from Apollo 17 in 1972.
DSCOVR is hanging at one of the solar system’s points of gravitational equilibrium, known as Lagrange point 1, which allows the spacecraft to remain relatively stable. This position means the satellite will always be facing the sunny side of Earth, which will also allow it to gather solar data.
Apollo 17 astronaut Buzz Aldrin added context for Monday’s milestone in a blog post, saying the project “is an innovative advance in redefining the word ‘exploration’ – and also is a powerful stepping stone to practice similar operations at Mars and its moons to establish a settlement on the planet Mars.”
New images are expected to come in every day after the satellite goes into full operation, the Guardian reported.
It’s our only home, folks. Let’s take care of it a bit better, OK?
“Apollo 17 astronaut Buzz Aldrin added context for Monday’s milestone in a blog post, saying the project “is an innovative advance in redefining the word ‘exploration’ – and also is a powerful stepping stone to practice similar operations at Mars and its moons to establish a settlement on the planet Mars.””
Buzz Aldrin was on Apollo 11 not Apollo 17. The Apollo 17 crew was Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans and Harrison H. Schmitt. The late Dr. Schmitt later served as a senator from Arizona.
It is odd that the article includes only a partial image of the current photo, but the whole image of the 1972 photo. Why is that?
For those of you that are interested, here is a link to the full photo:
It is pretty cool.
Thanks, I came to the comment section for the whole purpose to see if someone had linked to the whole picture. I thought it odd they didn’t even link to it in the article.
I also thought it was odd the article included no link to the new photo. Thanks Blue_Bear for posting the url.