Also the live broadcast Christmas Eve reading of Genesis from lunar orbit, with video of the lunar surface passing by. Even now as a non-believer, that broadcast is deeply impressed in my memory. "(CNN)Fifty years ago, astronaut Bill Anders captured an iconic photo of Earth. Looking out a window of the Apollo 8 spacecraft on Christmas Eve, 1968, he glimpsed a splash of blue beyond the lunar surface. After a fumbling exchange in zero gravity, his crewmate Jim Lovell extended a roll of 70 mm color film. At 16:39 Universal Time, 240,000 miles from home, Anders aimed his Hasselblad camera and brought our world into focus in one of history's most famous photographs. "Earthrise" transformed the first crewed mission to orbit the moon from a nationalistic bid for prestige in the Cold-War-era space race, into something more profound: a dawning appreciation of humanity's common destiny on a fragile planet in the vacuum of space. The sight of Earth, bursting with color against the inky darkness of space and a barren moonscape, was "the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen," Anders told Andrew Chaikin, a writer who later recounted the photo's fascinating history for the Smithsonian. And the view was "totally unanticipated," Anders said, because the mission had been so focused on going to the moon." I only wanted to remind folks of this historic event. CNN's article goes into environmental problems and climate change, so those not wanting to spoil this commemoration of history right now, don't read the article just yet.
A while ago they were looking for a middle aged couple to go to Mars. I started talking with the missus about it, lol.
She didn’t say you were from there. Sounds like a fun adventure, but I’m sure Mrs. Leisk is risk adverse.
Here is a better Apollo-centric version of the story, including video and audio of that Earthrise, and the black-and-white photo taken first before switching out to color film. And a story written much more in the holiday spirit: On Christmas Eve 50 years ago, Apollo 8 gave a troubled world hope | The Seattle Times Or just the included YouTube portion (Earthrise starts at 0:39):
