The sight of a small, intensely blue Earth rising above the barren, gray horizon of the Moon was one of the few things that NASA and the crew of Apollo 8 had not thoroughly planned and rehearsed beforehand. As historian Robert Poole noted, this lack of preparation meant that the sight of Earth came with the force of a revelation,
not just for the astronauts but for everyone on the ground. We came all this way to explore the Moon,
Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders said, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.
Using the latest elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, this visualization attempts to recreate what the astronauts saw. The virtual camera of the rendering software is put in the position of the Apollo 8 spacecraft at the time of the photographs, as the spacecraft emerged from its fourth pass behind the Moon. It shows a two-minute interval centered on 16:39:06 UT (10:39 a.m. Houston time) on December 24, 1968. This is around the time of AOS (acquisition of signal), the moment when radio contact is re-established after being lost on the far side of the Moon.
The position and motion of the spacecraft are based on a state vector, a set of (x, y, z) position and (vx, vy, vz) velocity values, published in NASA's Apollo 8 Mission Report about a year after the flight. The animator translated these values, given in Moon-centered inertial coordinates for Besselian year 1969.0, into a modern coordinate system, then calculated an orbit. The spacecraft was 110 km (68 miles, 60 nautical miles) above the surface of the Moon at 11.2°S 113.8°E when the Earthrise photograph was taken.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 349427, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3936/#media_group_349427", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "A simulation of what the Apollo 8 crew saw as the Earth rose above the lunar horizon during their fourth orbit around the Moon. Overlays both a clock and two of the photographs taken at the time. 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They were taken on December 24, 1968 by the crew of Apollo 8, the first humans to leave low Earth orbit.Using the latest elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, this visualization attempts to recreate what the astronauts saw. || ", "release_date": "2012-08-31T00:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2025-02-02T22:07:59.624644-05:00", "main_image": { "id": 435318, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003900/a003976/earthrise_hw.2814_searchweb.png", "filename": "earthrise_hw.2814_searchweb.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "A simulation of what the Apollo 8 crew saw as the Earth rose above the lunar horizon during their fourth orbit around the Moon.", "width": 320, "height": 180, "pixels": 57600 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [ { "id": 10951, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10951/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "Earthrise 2.0", "description": "On December 24, 1968, three Apollo astronauts circled the moon, becoming the first humans ever to do so. On their fourth orbit, Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman interrupted the studies of the moon's cratered terrain to roll the spacecraft, bringing the three main windows around to face the direction of travel. All of a sudden, a bright sliver of light appeared from behind the lunar horizon. Within seconds, a sphere with dazzling white swirls and vivid shades of blue came into view. The astronauts quickly positioned the onboard cameras, first capturing a black-and-white image of Earth rising, and then snapping a color photo of the Blue Planet floating above the horizon. This breathtaking color image would later become known as the iconic Earthrise photograph. The visualization uses data collected by NASA's Terra satellite and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to re-create this historic moment in space exploration. || ", "release_date": "2012-04-19T00:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:53:07.612092-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 477279, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010900/a010951/earthrise.2121_1024x576.jpg", "filename": "earthrise.2121_1024x576.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "The iconic photograph from the 1960s with a modern twist.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 10961, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10961/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Brings \"Earthrise\" to Everyone", "description": "On December 24, 1968, Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman and crew members William A. Anders and James A. Lovell, Jr. became the first humans to photograph the Earth rising over the moon. Now, the rest of us can see what it was like in a new NASA visualization that draws on richly detailed maps of the moon's surface made from data gathered by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter!The narration in this visualization comes from the original audio recording of the Apollo 8 astronauts. The flight time has been compressed for effect. The Earth in this visualization is not an exact duplication of what the astronauts saw but a mosaic of more recent images taken by Earth-observing satellites. Representative clouds were then layered on top of the mosaic. || ", "release_date": "2012-04-19T00:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2024-10-10T00:16:00.694961-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 476858, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010900/a010961/lro_apollo_earthrise_ipod_lg00500_print.jpg", "filename": "lro_apollo_earthrise_ipod_lg00500_print.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Watch the visualization here!For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } } ], "newer_versions": [ { "id": 4129, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4129/", "page_type": "Visualization", "title": "Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary", "description": "In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8's historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. Narrator Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visualization of the view from both inside and outside the spacecraft accompanied by the onboard audio of the astronauts.The visualization draws on numerous historical sources, including the actual cloud pattern on Earth from the ESSA-7 satellite and dozens of photographs taken by Apollo 8, and it reveals new, historically significant information about the Earthrise photographs. It has not been widely known, for example, that the spacecraft was rolling when the photos were taken, and that it was this roll that brought the Earth into view. The visualization establishes the precise timing of the roll and, for the first time ever, identifies which window each photograph was taken from.The key to the new work is a set of vertical stereo photographs taken by a camera mounted in the Command Module's rendezvous window and pointing straight down onto the lunar surface. It automatically photographed the surface every 20 seconds. By registering each photograph to a model of the terrain based on LRO data, the orientation of the spacecraft can be precisely determined.Andrew Chaikin's article Who Took the Legendary Earthrise Photo From Apollo 8? appeared in the January, 2018 issue of Smithsonian magazine. It includes the story of the making of this visualization.A Google Hangout discussion of this visualization between Ernie Wright (creator of the visualization), Andrew Chaikin, John Keller (LRO project scientist), and Aries Keck (NASA media specialist) was held on December 20, 2013. A replay of that hangout is available here.Ernie Wright presented a talk about the making of this animation at the 2014 SIGGRAPH Conference in Vancouver. He also wrote a NASA Wavelength blog entry about Earthrise that includes links to educator resources related to LRO. || ", "release_date": "2013-12-20T10:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2025-01-05T22:27:37.229660-05:00", "main_image": { "id": 459826, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004100/a004129/video_preview.jpg", "filename": "video_preview.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "The full video, with narration by Andrew Chaikin. You can also watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel. For complete transcript, click here.This video is also available on our YouTube channel.", "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "pixels": 2073600 } } ], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }