The mission that changed everything

[muriel_volestrangler]

Forty years ago the US launched its Apollo 8 mission to the Moon: the first human journey to another world. Its astronauts captured this astonishing photograph which revealed the fragility and isolation of our planet. It has become one of history's most influential images. This is the story of how a picture transformed our view of ourselves

http://static.guim.co.uk.nyud.net:8080/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2008/11/28/space460x276.jpg

It has proved to be the most enduring image we have of our fragile world. Over a colourless lunar surface, the Earth hangs like a gaudy Christmas bauble against a deep black background. The planet's blue disc - half in shadow - is streaked with faint traces of white, yellow and brown while its edge is sharply defined. There is no blurring that might be expected from the blanket of oxygen and nitrogen that envelops our planet. Our atmosphere is too thin to be seen clearly from the Moon: a striking reminder - if we ever needed one - of the frailty of the biosphere that sustains life on Earth.

This is Earthrise, photographed by astronaut Bill Anders as he and his fellow Apollo 8 crewmen, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, orbited the Moon on Christmas Eve, 1968. His shot, taken 40 years ago next month, has become the most influential environmental image, and one of the most reproduced photographs, in history. Arguably, his picture is also the most important legacy of the Apollo space programme. Thanks to this image, humans could see, for the first time, their planet, not as continents or oceans, but as a world that was 'whole and round and beautiful and small,' as the poet Archibald MacLeish put it.

Certainly, Earthrise is a striking reminder of Earth's vulnerability. We may have forgotten the men who risked their lives getting to the Moon and who explored its dead landscape - a 'beat-up' world as they put it - but the view they brought back of that glittering blue hemisphere continues to mesmerise.

'Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark,' the US astronomer, Carl Sagan, noted. 'There is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.' The opinion is shared by Sir David Attenborough. 'I clearly remember my first sight (of the Earthrise photograph). I suddenly realised how isolated and lonely we are on Earth.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/nov/30/apollo-8-mission