The Blue Marble: How a Photograph Revealed Earth's Fragile Beauty
Chapter One A PIECE OF BLUE IN SPACE We’re not the first to discover this but we’d like to confirm that the world is round These words from Eugene Cernan commander of the Apollo 17 spacecraft reached Mission Control on Earth in less than a second The men and women monitoring the mission that day December 7 1972 smiled at Cernan’s little joke Humor was welcome because it helped to break the tension they were naturally feeling at that moment The Apollo 17 craft had launched from NASA’s John F Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s eastern coast five hours before Everyone involved was concentrating hard on doing their jobs Their goal was to place Cernan and another astronaut on the moon’s surface There they would travel farther than any of the U S astronauts who had walked on the moon They would do so using NASA’s Lunar Roving Vehicle The LRV which weighed 460 pounds 209 kilograms was similar to a golf cart but much more sophisticated It would allow the astronauts to explore the surface out to a distance of 6 miles 9 7 kilometers from the landing craft The LRV could go farther But to be on the safe side mission planners had restricted the trips to 6 miles to conserve the men’s oxygen and other elements of life support
Eugene Cernan left and Ronald Evans under zero gravity conditions aboard Apollo 17 While exploring the astronauts would collect soil and rock samples Studying these materials on Earth would help scientists determine the moon’s physical makeup and age They might also be able to figure out how the moon had formed
Harrison Jack Schmitt collects rock and soil samples near a huge boulder When NASA was planning the mission no one foresaw that there would be a huge bonus Even as he quipped about Earth’s being round Cernan was unaware that Apollo 17 would soon produce an iconic photo This stunning image would show planet Earth as a lonely globe floating in the inky black immenseness of outer space Nicknamed the Blue Marble the picture was destined to become a good deal more famous than the mission itself Within a few years it would achieve the reputation of being one of the most often
reproduced and most recognizable photos in history Considering the picture’s almost legendary status it is perhaps surprising that it still is not clear which of the three Apollo 17 crewmen took it Besides the commander Eugene Cernan command module pilot Ronald Evans and Harrison Jack Schmitt the lunar module pilot and mission geologist were on board Schmitt is convinced he shot the famous Blue Marble photo Schmitt later said he snapped the shot in question I treasure the whole mission he said in a 2012 interview Every day had more than one really spectacular event The first day we saw this nearly full Earth and I was able to take that picture the Blue Marble still
