Earth's First Selfie

This day in 1966, two images of of our home, planet Earth, were captured by America's first spacecraft to orbit the moon, Lunar Orbiter 1. These low resolution, black and white photos gave us the first visual glimpse of a larger perspective. If you zoom out of the colossal grand canyon, out of the expanse of the US, beyond the far stretched of the world's oceans and then our atmosphere, our global selfie comes into view.

The intention of this mission was as a precursor to the 1969 Apollo Moon landing. Specifically, the intent was to map out the terrain of the moon's surface and address the concerns that the any potential landing zones may yet be too rough for Apollo to land successfully. According to the Lunar and Planetary Institue the data collected from the Lunar Orbitor 1 detailed terrain for 10 of 20 possible landing sites spanning a total distance covered of "262,000 square kilometers of the nearside of the Moon and over 3,000,000 square kilometers of the farside."

 Between all 5 Lunar Orbiter Missions, 99% of the moon's surface was photographed with precision far beyond what was possible from earth and served to provide more accurate distances and trajectory readings to aid in the accuracy of the Apollo missions.


So thanks to the Lunar Orbiter project for allowing our first global selfie.