69 hours, 8 minutes and 16 seconds after launch, the crew reached the far side of the Moon. They burned their engines for a lunar orbit insertion (LOI), which lasted four minutes. The burn slowed the spacecraft down so it could be captured by the Moon’s gravitational pull, making it the first ever manned satellite of another world.
The Moon is tidally locked to Earth, which means it rotates on its axis at the exact same rate that it orbits Earth. As a result, we only see one side of the Moon from Earth’s surface. Borman, Lovell and Anders were the first to see the far side…
Lovell described it during a live telecast as,
“essentially gray, no color…like Plaster of Paris or some sort of grayish beach sand.”
For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars. NASA’s Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun.
[Voyager 2 Heliopause – JPL/CalTech]Both spacecraft carry with them a 12-inch (30 cm) golden phonograph record that contains pictures and sounds of Earth, along with symbolic directions on the cover for playing the record and data detailing the location of Earth.[1][18] The record is intended as a combination of a time capsule and an interstellar message to any civilization, alien or far-future human, that may recover either of the Voyagers. The contents of this record were selected by a committee that included Timothy Ferris[18] and was chaired by Carl Sagan.
70 years ago #today in 1946, White Sands Missile Range scientists launched V-2 No. 13 & took the 1st pictures of Earth from space, 105 km up pic.twitter.com/a1hvMchR2x
I learnt about Lagrange Points at school, never imagined I could see what the earth looked like from one of them.
Is this not truly awe-inspiring?
On July 20, 2015, NASA released to the world the first image of the sunlit side of Earth captured by the space agency’s EPIC camera on NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite. The camera has now recorded a full year of life on Earth from its orbit at Lagrange point 1, approximately 1 million miles from Earth, where it is balanced between the gravity of our home planet and the sun.
[Source: NASA – Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ] From NASA:
The Earth straddling the limb of the Moon, as seen from above Compton crater. Center of the Earth in this view is 4.04°N, 12.44°W, just off the coast of Liberia. The large tan area in the upper right is the Sahara desert, and just beyond is Saudia Arabia. The Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America are visible to the left.
Links
LROC – Everything about the moon you wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.
NASA’s yearly Biosphere cycle never ceases to amaze. What is, in effect, “global lungs” inhaling and exhaling.
Satellite instruments reveal the yearly cycle of plant life on the land and in the water. On land, the images represent the density of plant growth, while in the oceans they show the chlorophyll concentration from tiny, plant-like organisms called phytoplankton. From December to February, during the northern hemisphere winter, plant life in the higher latitudes is minimal and receives little sunlight. However, even in the mid latitudes plants are dormant, shown here with browns and yellows on the land and dark blues in the ocean.
By contrast the southern ocean and land masses are at the height of the summer season and plant life is revealed with dark green colors on the land and in the ocean. As the year progresses, the situations reverses, with plant life following the increased sunlight northward, while the southern hemisphere experiences decreased plant activity during its’ winter.
A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth from one million miles away.
The color images of Earth from NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) are generated by combining three separate images to create a photographic-quality image. The camera takes a series of 10 images using different narrowband filters — from ultraviolet to near infrared — to produce a variety of science products. The red, green and blue channel images are used in these Earth images.
[ SUNLIT Earth NASA – Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) 1 Million MilesReminiscent of the The Blue Marble which is the famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometers (28,000 miles)
[Blue Marble – Corrected “North” – Apollo 17 ]The geographer in me thinks it is always worth noting that the original image/perspective of the three astronauts, Harrison H. Schmitt, Eugene A. Cernan and Ron Evans when the photo was taken,was with the earth-view decidedly “down-under” in orientation!
![[JPL/Caltech]](http://www.billcoppinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Voyager2-Heliopause-PIA22924-640.gif)
