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Humankind’s very first take a look at Earth from the moon didn’t come up until Aug. 23, 1966, when this grainy, black-and-white image revealed our world as a crescent above the lunar horizon, appearing to increase as the camera-toting spacecraft relocated orbit.

At the time, it was a landmark image– and absolutely unexpected, according to NASAThe very first view of Earth from the moon originated from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1, which sent the image to a tracking station at Robledo De Chavela near Madrid.

Lunar Orbiter 1, the very first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the moon, released on an Atlas-Agena D rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Aug. 10, 1966, and got in lunar orbit 4 days later on. It was on a cartographic objective, created to picture possibly safe landing websites on the moon for NASA’s Surveyor and Apollo objectives, according to NASA. The spacecraft’s video camera system wasn’t extremely detailed, it took far more comprehensive views from lunar orbit than were possible from Earth through even the biggest telescopes at the time.Lunar Orbiter 1’s cam, produced by Eastman Kodak, included an automatic system that established exposed movie, scanned the images, and sent them to Earth. The video camera was initially established by the National Reconnaissance Office and was flown on the Cold War-era Samos spy satellites that were released by the U.S. in the 1960s, according to NASA.

Lunar Orbiter 1 orbited the moon for 76 days up until it intentionally crashed into the moon on Oct. 29, 1966.

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Lunar Orbiter 1’s video camera snapped pictures of 9 possible Apollo landing websites and 7 backup websites. Earth as a crescent was photographed Aug. 23, 1966, at 16:35 GMT, when the spacecraft was on its 16th orbit, minutes before it entered the darkness of the moon’s far side.

Over 2 years later on, on Christmas Eve, 1968, Bill Anders, a lunar module pilot on Apollo 8, the very first lunar orbit objective, snapped the renowned “Earthrise” picture. This higher-resolution color image recorded mankind’s attention as a cultural turning point, however it was Lunar Orbiter 1’s extremely comparable image of Earth as a crescent increasing behind the moon, taken over 2 years previously, that was the technical.

For more superb area images, take a look at our Area Photo of the Week archives

Jamie Carter is a self-employed reporter and routine Live Science factor based in Cardiff, U.K. He is the author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners and lectures on astronomy and the natural world. Jamie frequently composes for Space.com, TechRadar.com, Forbes Science, BBC Wildlife publication and Scientific American, and numerous others. He modifies WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com.

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