earth rising over the moon.

We saw Earth rise over the moon in 1968. It changed everything.

The famous Christmas Eve snapshot took 90 seconds to make and kicked off five decades of awareness of our planet’s beauty and fragility.

Apollo 8, the first mission to carry humans to the moon, entered lunar orbit on December 24, 1968. That evening, mission commander Frank Borman, command module pilot Jim Lovell, and lunar module pilot William Anders held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of Earth and the moon as seen from their spacecraft. "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth," Lovell said.
Photograph by NASA

A half-century ago, three humans sailed into lunar orbit, looped around the moon 10 times, and returned home. By the time Earth’s gravity had once again fastened them firmly to the planet, the Apollo 8 crew were rightly celebrated as the first Earthlings to visit our celestial companion.

But their true legacy revealed itself three days later, on December 30, 1968, when NASA released an image taken on Christmas Eve that shows our home planet suspended above the moon.

Now called Earthrise, the image is legendary; a postcard from the first souls to truly leave Earth behind. True, spacecraft had sent back views like this before, but this photo was the first of its kind taken by a spellbound human

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