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On 23 August 1966, NASA captured the first photograph of the Earth as seen from a lunar orbit by its unmanned Lunar Orbiter 1 probe. This spacecraft had been launched on 10 August 1966 with a very specific mission: to photograph soft areas of the lunar surface for the selection and verification of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions.
However, fate had something much bigger in store. Photographing the Earth was not part of the original mission, not even considered until the spacecraft was already in space. It was a spontaneous decision by the control team that would result in one of the most iconic images in the history of space exploration.
The photograph was taken from a distance of approximately 380,000 kilometres and shows half of the Earth, from Istanbul to Cape Town, with the eastern areas submerged at night. Although the image revealed no details of the Earth’s surface when it was taken in 1966, its emotional and scientific impact was immediate and lasting.
The technical legacy of a revolutionary image
Lunar Orbiter 1 was equipped with a sophisticated 68-kilogram Eastman Kodak imaging system that used wide-angle lenses and had the unique ability to develop film, scan the images and send them back to Earth. In a twist that was not known until after the end of the Cold War, this camera had originally been developed by the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and had previously flown on the Samos E-1 spy satellite.
The original image was never recovered in its full resolution from the mission’s stored data. It was not until 2008 that the Lunar Orbiter Image Retrieval Project (LOIRP) managed to restore and significantly improve the quality of this historic photograph, revealing details that remained hidden for more than four decades.
The Lunar Orbiter 1 mission ended on 29 October 1966, when it was deliberately crashed into the lunar surface to avoid interference with future missions. During its operational time, the spacecraft had successfully completed its main objectives, capturing a total of 205 images of the Earth’s natural satellite.