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Earth Rise


Earthrise
 
 

Apollo VIII
December 1968

Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders were the first humans ever to leave Earth's
gravitational pull and go somewhere else!   This was the first manned trip around the Moon.
They made 10 orbits before heading home.  This was the Apollo VIII mission where on
Christmas Eve, 1968 Bill Anders began quoting the first verses from Genesis.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth . . ."

Then, he passed the verses over to the other crew members and they joined in reading aloud in
a broadcast heard around the world.

Two of the crew claimed credit for the photo.  Jim Lovell tells a pretty good story about that
in one of his books.  Anyway, this photo appeared in Time Magazine and ended up on
everything from posters to postage stamps.  It packs a visual and emotional wallop.

The thing about it, though, is this:  the picture's turned the wrong way!  The ship
orbited the Moon from right to left, not down to up.  They emerged from behind the moon
with it on their right and the bright blue Earth was to their left.  The photo really looks like this:

The right way




I have a copy framed up on my wall.  And, it's turned the way it was taken.
I'll let you in on a secret, though: I enjoy the popular version better.

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Read the many fine books written by astronauts.  One is the story of Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell or The Last Man

On the Moon by Eugene Cernan and Don Davis (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Recycle icon at www.nzwaa.com
Space walk photo is in public domain. It's a government photo.   I think I got this at //spaceflight.nasa.gov
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created by Don,  not a corp., 2003

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