science · 23 August 1966 · 58 years ago
In 1966, the Lunar Orbiter 1 took the first photograph of the Earth from the Moon. In grainy black and white, the earthrise picture was made using computer imaging that was then in its infancy. As then released to the public, the image looked starkly black and wide with poor resolution. Forty-two years later, an Image Recovery Project used restored 1960s tape drives to access the original analog data from the tapes. With modern digital processing, a striking level of detail was obtained in a much higher resolution picture. Yet, that image was an after-thought, because the essential purpose of the Lunar Orbiter mission was to identify suitable landing sites on the moon surface in preparation for the manned missions to the moon.
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