File:Blue Marble photo - Apollo 17.jpg

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"Blue Marble" from Apollo 17

Image AS17-148-22727 -- December 7, 1972

The first 'Whole Earth' photograph taken by a human being.

"As they left home, the crew had a superb view of the full disc of the Earth, lit from horizon to horizon. Behind the camera was Harrison (Jack) Schmitt, a geologist and geophysicist who, according to [Apollo Director of Photography, Richard] Underwood, understood the essential value of pictures of the planet Earth as you moved away...

"I kept telling Jack... that will be the classic picture. Make sure you get it after you go translunar... that one's at 28,000 miles. That's a perfect picture and he aimed it beautifully.' " -- Apollo Moon Missions (©1998)

NASA's Blue Marble public photo gallery...

• http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo17/html/as17-148-22727.html

• http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/the-blue-marble-shot-our-first-complete-photograph-of-earth/237167/

NASA originally released the Blue Marble photo on Christmas Eve 1972 -- four years to the day after Apollo 8's 'Earthrise' photo.

Astronaut Cernan: "You have to literally just pinch yourself and ask yourself the question, silently: Do you know where you are at this point in time and space, and in reality and in existence, when you can look out the window and... it's home, it's people, family, love, life -- and besides that it is beautiful. You can see from pole to pole and across oceans and continents and you can watch it turn and there's no strings holding it up, and it's moving in a blackness that is almost beyond conception."

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Apollo 8's Earthrise photo -- December 24th... from the Moon...

"The Earthrise photograph in 1968 and the Blue Marble photograph in 1972 between them frame the Apollo Moon programme. They also represent the beginning and the summit of whole Earth awareness. But while the Earthrise showed the Earth in space, 'Blue marble' showed the Earth alone. Filling the frame, centered on Africa (mankind's place of origin), and looking both alone and alive, its message was not 'space' but 'home'. It was a record of a particular historical moment: mankind's last trip (to date) beyond Earth's orbit..." -- Earthrise (©2008)

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Blue-Thoughts as we spin thru space...

• http://io9.com/the-real-story-of-apollo-17-and-why-we-never-went-ba-1670503448

Memories of 'Earthrise'...

• http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/home/earthrise.html

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