‘Earthrise’ snap that changed how we envisage our planet

THE ASTRONAUTS had spun around the moon a few times already, their gaze pointed down on the grey, pockmarked lunar surface. But now as they completed another orbit of the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, Frank Borman, the commander of the Apollo 8 mission, rolled the spacecraft, and, soon, there it was.

Earth, this bright, beautiful sphere, alone in the inky vastness of space, a soloist at the edge of the stage suspended in the spotlight.

“Oh, my God,” exclaimed Bill Anders, the lunar module pilot. “Look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!”

Anders knew black and white film wouldn’t do it justice. But he also knew he didn’t have a lot of time if he was going to get the shot.

“Hand me a roll of colour quick, will you,” he said.

“Oh, man, that’s great,” said Jim Lovell, the command module pilot and navigator.

“Hurry,” Anders pleaded. “Quick!”

Anders loaded the colour film into his Hasselblad camera and started firing away while his anxious crewmates remained transfixed by the blue and white vision outside their windows. “You got it?” Lovell asked. He did.

They splashed down in the Pacific on Dec 27.

Two days later, the film was processed, and NASA released photo number 68-H-1401 to the public with a news release that said: “This view of the rising earth greeted the Apollo 8 astronauts as they came from behind the moon after the lunar orbit insertion burn.”

The press recognised immediately the power of the image, Earth, a brilliant oasis in a desert of darkness.

The New York Times ran it on its front page above the fold. The Washington Post followed a day later. Life magazine ran a photo essay with a double-page spread of the image and lines from James Dickey, the former US poet laureate:

“Behold/ The blue planet steeped in its dream/ Of reality.”

“Earthrise,” as it would be called, went viral, or as viral as anything could in 1968, a time that saw all sorts of photographs leave their mark on the national consciousness, most of them scars: The South Vietnamese general pointing his pistol at the soldier’s head, point blank; the busboy tending to Robert F. Kennedy’s lifeless body; the civil rights activists on the motel balcony pointing in the direction of Martin Luther King Jr.’s killer.

“Earthrise” was something different. — Washington Post.

Oh, my God. Look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty! — Bill Anders, lunar module pilot

The Apollo 8 crew, from left, Jim Lovell, Bill Anders and Frank Borman. — NASA photos

Fifty years ago this week. the Apollo 8 spacecraft became the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon. Frank Borman, Anders and Lovell entered lunar orbit on Dec 24 and held a live broadcast, showing pictures of Earth and the Moon as seen from the spacecraft and reading from the book of Genesis. The mission became famous for capturing this iconic “Earthrise” photograph, snapped by Anders as the spacecraft was rotating.