The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Some perspective
Forty five years to the day since one of the most iconic photographs of Earth was taken from space, what lessons can be learned about the future of the planet?
I think by looking back at our only home we disabuse ourselves of the notion that humanity is somehow bigger than Earth itself. BEN STEWART OF GREENPEACE
On December 7 1972, the crew of Apollo 17 – the last manned mission to the Moon – turned their camera back towards Earth and took a photo of our home planet that has become one of the most reproduced images in human history.
The photograph – dubbed The Blue Marble – was taken from the Nasa spacecraft five hours and six minutes after launch, when it was 29,000 kilometres (18,000 miles) from home.
Extending from the Mediterranean Sea to Antarctica, it was the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the South polar ice cap with the entire coastline of Africa clearly visible and the Asian mainland on the horizon towards the north east.
It wasn’t the first, or indeed last, time astronauts took dramatic pictures showing the humbling fragility of Earth in the infinite blackness of space.
The first time humans truly saw themselves from a distance was on Christmas Eve 1968 when Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders took a picture dubbed Earthrise, which showed “Spaceship Earth” rising over the Moon. The picture had such a profound impact it was credited with launching the worldwide environmental movement.
Another of the most profound pictures of Earth taken since – known as the Pale Blue Dot - was photographed on February 14 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of six billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles). In the photograph, Earth’s apparent size is less than a pixel – the planet appears as a tiny dot against the vastness of space among bands of sunlight scattered by the camera’s optics.
So at a time when our collective existence is threatened by climate change, deforestation, pollution, loss of biodiversity and explosive population growth, what can these humbling, beautiful and inspiring images teach us?
Former Nasa Space Shuttle pilot Lieutenant Colonel Duane ‘Digger’ Carey, who recently visited Fife, was the 410th human to enter space when he piloted Columbia on what was Nasa’s fourth Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.
Orbiting Earth 165 times and covering 3.9 million miles in over 262 hours, he didn’t have too much time to look out of the window but was “fundamentally influenced” by seeing Earth from space.
He told The Courier: “I believe experienced astronauts are more aware of things like environmental awareness and a perspective that the Earth is not as big, as forgiving, as limitless as we think it is. It’s a rather small spaceship, really.
“Looking at the Earth is beautiful but I think the true appreciation is when you look the other way. When you look out into space and say: ‘Wow, there’s nothing out there except radiation and vacuum. Everything that can protect us is there on this planet’.
“It makes you develop these contrite ideas, that: ‘Hey, we are all in this together. Let’s get along, work it out, talk until the cows come home. Let’s not hurt each other and shoot each other and do these kind of things’.”
Mike Robinson, chief executive of the Perth-based Royal Scottish Geographical Society, said the famous Blue Marble image offered a sense of “human insignificance on a grand scale”.
He added: “For those concerned with humanity and the natural world, it was a wake-up call to the fragility and isolation of planet earth in space, and a reminder of the need to protect it, spawning much of our modern environmental concern. I don’t believe we have ever been truly sustainable as a species and 45 years on we still have a great deal to learn and enact.”
Gina Hanrahan, acting head of policy at WWF Scotland, said: “Climate change is already affecting nature, people and places on every continent and in every ocean on earth. The kind of images that are already motivating new generations of people to care about the environment can be found much closer to home.”
Dr Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “The Blue Marble image enabled us to step outside ourselves and our immediate surroundings, affording us a global perspective in the truest sense of the word. It made visible the finite, closed nature of the system in which we live and how our behaviour should better reflect those boundaries.”
Greenpeace head of media Ben Stewart added: “I think by looking back at our only home we disabuse ourselves of the notion that humanity is somehow bigger than Earth itself.”