Inspiring generations to see beyond... and go beyond.

The first attempts to take pictures of our planet from space were stunning. As there was little to no experience with photography in space, each mission in the race to the moon brought new insights, but also challenges. Space photography was in its infancy when the Mercury Atlas 8 space mission commenced.

A Hasselblad 500C with a ZEISS Planar 2.8/80 lens with only a few small modifications was taken into orbit for the first time to better study and document our planet.

Not everything went smoothly when preparing to travel to the moon. For example, during the Gemini 9 mission, a docking maneuver failed when the crew approached the ATDA (Augmented Target Docking Adapter). It seemed as if they were looking into the jaws of an alligator due to a mishap with deployment of the nose shroud. Photographs of the maneuver later revealed the technical problem.

The images of the event were so crisp that they made it easy to subsequently identify the defect with the mechanism of the protective shroud.

The mission was to orbit the moon, photograph the lunar landscape and identify suitable future landing sites. Until then, people had only speculated what the moon’s specific surface might be like.

Something transpired during the fourth lunar orbit on 24 December that wasn’t on the flight plan: as the spacecraft emerged from the dark side of the moon, the astronauts beheld the earth rising above the lunar horizon. They hurried to capture this stunning image and took the first color photograph of the rising earth above the moon. The image of a small blue planet floating in the darkness of space, forever changed the world's perspective of the fragile, precious planet we call home.

The images from the Apollo 11 mission were taken to Houston right after the crew's return to earth.

However, before the moon photos were developed, the processing equipment was checked one more time with a test film. During this inspection, the film processor suddenly started leaking ethylene oxide and destroyed the test film. This turned out to be a blessing: thanks to this final test, the development team quickly fixed the defect and could successfully develop the images of the first moon landing. The photographs taken during the moon missions were published around the world and made history.