![]() Robinson et al., The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, 2008 Ramos-Izquierdo et al., The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) optical subsystem, 2009 Quaide, Rilles, ridges and domes-Clues to maria history. Qian, Topography of the Moon from the Chang’e Laser Altimetry Data, 2008 Raytheon ITTS Contractor Report, Lanham, MD, 2001 Pavlis et al., GEODYN Operations Manuals. Nozette, The Clementine mission to the Moon: Scientific overview. Neumann, The crossover analysis of MOLA altimetric data. Melosh, Impact Cratering: A Geologic Process (Oxford University Press, New York, 1989). Konopliv, Recent gravity models as a result of the Lunar Prospector mission. Kamalakar, Lunar ranging instrument for Chandrayaan-1. Hartmann, Moon: Origin and evolution of multi-ring basins. Matsumoto, Lunar degree 2 potential Love number determination from satellite tracking data. Gardner, Target signatures for laser altimeters: an analysis. Williams, Planetary Ephemeris DE421 for Phoenix Navigation (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, 2008) Dickey, Lunar laser ranging: A continuing legacy of the Apollo program. Cook, Lunar polar topography derived from Clementine stereoimages. Chin, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter overview: The instrument suite and mission. Cavanaugh, The Mercury Laser Altimeter instrument for the MESSENGER mission. ![]() Araki, Lunar global shape and polar topography derived from Kaguya-LALT laser altimetry. Abshire, Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) in the ICESat mission: On-orbit measurement performance. And what they saw helped fuel what followed.J.B. Earthlings didn’t just look forward to an ambitious space age-they trained the camera on themselves. Even though the photo seems grainy and low-res to modern eyes, it helped capture the possibility of the planet we share. Still, there’s something special about seeing something for the first time. It’s been done again-as when NASA took a better high-res Earthrise image in 2015 that updated the “big blue marble” view. The Lunar Orbiter 1 photo was different: It showed the planet as a round planet in deep space. NASAĮarth had been photographed before-in 1946, a satellite captured a grainy look at Earth’s surface, outdoing prior pictures of the Earth taken from a 14-mile-high balloon. They coordinated a high-risk maneuver that repositioned the satellite, then took a successful photo of earthrise from the moon on August 23, 1966. The map the craft helped produce was only recently updated with the help of the Lunar Reconnoissance Orbiter.Īs Stein reports, the Lunar Orbiter 1 mission went as planned, but near its end scientists on the ground decided they wanted to train its sights on Earth instead of the moon. Eventually, images from the photographic surveys helped NASA hone in on candidate sites, document other lunar sites of scientific interest, like the far side of the moon, and produce a map of the entire moon. The orbiters had their own film processing units inside-using two lenses, they’d take pictures, develop and process them, scan them and transmit the data back to Earth. Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratoryīetween 19, NASA sent a total of five lunar orbiters to photograph the moon. In response, NASA sent a series of high-tech spacecraft into orbit to take snapshots of the moon’s surface and inform the eventual Apollo 11 mission. At the time, the agency was preparing for an eventual lunar landing and needed reconnaissance photos to find the best possible spot on the surface of the moon. Stein writes for Inside Science News Service, it almost didn’t happen. The photo was taken by NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966-and, as Ben P. That honor went to the black-and-white image you see above. Though the photo eventually became one of the most-used images in history, it wasn’t the first to show Earth from deep space. If you think the photo was the ubiquitous “blue marble”-style photograph, think again- that photo wasn’t taken until Apollo 17 traveled toward the moon in 1972. But 50 years ago today, that changed when a NASA spacecraft captured the first-ever photograph of Earth from the moon. What does Earth look like? For millennia, humans could only speculate on their planet’s appearance.
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