Earthrise

The cold grey of the moon's surface and the infinite black of space give way to the bright blue-white hope of warmth and water that peeks over the horizon, and then proudly awakens all the martians with its luminous presence. You stand in awe of this miracle, both stunned at its beauty and humbled by the tininess of your home, so alone in the vastness of space, our little lost earth. Earthrise is the name given to a photograph of the Earth taken by astronaut William Anders in 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission. In Life's 100 Photographs that Changed the World, wilderness photographer Galen Rowell called Earthrise "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken." Another author called its appearance the beginning of the environmental movement. In 1969, the US Postal Service issued a stamp commemorating the Apollo 8 flight around the Moon. The stamp featured a detail of the Earthrise photograph, and the words, "In the beginning God...", recalling the Apollo 8 Genesis reading. On April 6, 2008, the first 1080p high-definition Earthrise video was captured, both a full Earthrise and Earthset video, by the JAXA lunar orbiter mission, SELENE. Apollo 8, the second crewed mission in the American Apollo space program, was the first human spaceflight to leave Earth orbit; the first to be captured by and escape from the gravitational field of another celestial body; and the first crewed voyage to return to Earth from another celestial body—Earth's Moon.