By today's photographic standards, the first images of Earth just looked like grainy black and white photos. After all, this is a historic photo.
NASA astronauts may have taken more than 900,000 photos from space. But 75 years ago, before there was a full view of Earth, we only had this. Hence, this image became the first photograph of Earth from space, taken on October 24, 1946.
"For 1946, that's a great achievement. This is great news," said Michael Neufeld, Senior Curator of the Department of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum.
How the photo was taken also has its own uniqueness and history. The image was taken with a 35mm film camera placed between the fuel tanks of a German Nazi V-2 rocket seized by the Allies after World War II, then launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, USA.
It was a single rocket launch from the New Mexico desert that simultaneously started the Cold War, the race for space between the superpowers, and experimental space science.
The launches of the 12th and 13th V-2 rockets on October 10 and October 24, 1946 from White Sands were relatively successful and became the first space science experiments to be conducted via rockets. Solar spectrographs record absorption patterns of ultraviolet light in the upper atmosphere.
On the 13th launch the payload carried a film camera mounted using parts of the B-29 bomber's fire control system, to take time-lapse photos of the center of the rocket during its flight to an altitude of 65 miles.
The camera worked beautifully, and even managed to survive a fall. Hours after the fall, the camera was found at the crash site in near-perfect condition even though the lens was missing.
The launch of the V-2 was not kept secret, but was widely publicized. In November of the launch year, images of the October 24 flight taken at various altitudes were released to the press and made big news.
