Beauty of the Blue Marble

Yet one of the mission’s most memorable achievements came while on its way to the Moon, when Schmitt snapped the “Blue Marble” photo. One has to travel at least 20,000 miles from Earth to see it in its entirety, and only 24 humans have ventured that deep into outer space. Even then, travelling at 20,000mph, most lunar mission astronauts saw the Earth partly in shadow, making Apollo 17’s sunlit image unique.

A new book, Apollo Remastered, by Cheshire-based Andy Saunders, has used state-of-the-art digital imaging to scan and restore hundreds of Nasa’s original photos, including Schmitt’s seminal image, displaying them with unprecedented detail and clarity. The Blue Marble photo continues to spark controversy, however, as Cernan and Evans both claimed to have taken the snap themselves.

Evans died in 1990, and Cernan in 2017, without relinquishing their claims. Nasa, diplomatically, attributes the image to all three astronauts.

Cernan, admiring the photo, called Earth: “The most beautiful star in the heavens – the most beautiful because it’s the one we understand and we know; it’s home, it’s people, family, love, life – and besides that it is beautiful. You can see from pole to pole and across oceans and continents and you can watch it turn and there’s no strings holding it up, and it’s moving in a blackness that is almost beyond conception.”

But ironically, the man who claims to have taken the photo revered by environmentalists has long argued against the scientific consensus of man-made climate change.

Schmitt has claimed he “saw no evidence” that global warming was a result of human activity, insisting that any change was happening at a slower pace than reported and that computer models are “often wrong.”

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1706147/blue-marble-earth-picture-space-apollo-17