"Forty years ago today, Apollo 17 astronauts took a famous photograph of Earth. It's now known as "The Blue Marble,"
because that's exactly what our home looks like: a blue marble floating
against the vast black velvet backdrop of space. The photograph was the
first clear image of the Earth, because the sun was at the astronauts'
back, and so the planet appears lit up and you can distinctly see blue,
white, brown, and green. You can also see a cyclone forming over the
Indian Ocean. The photo became a symbol of the environmental movement of
the 1970s.
The crew of Apollo 17 was about 28,000 miles away from Earth when they took the Blue Marble photo. It was the last time that astronauts, not robots, were on a lunar mission — since then, no humans have gotten far enough away from Earth to take a photo like it."
from the Writer's Almanac for today Dec 7, 2012 Host: Garrison Keillor
Writers: Betsy Allister, Holly Vanderhaar
The crew of Apollo 17 was about 28,000 miles away from Earth when they took the Blue Marble photo. It was the last time that astronauts, not robots, were on a lunar mission — since then, no humans have gotten far enough away from Earth to take a photo like it."
from the Writer's Almanac for today Dec 7, 2012 Host: Garrison Keillor
Writers: Betsy Allister, Holly Vanderhaar
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