QUICK FACTS
What it is: The world’s first photo of Earth from the moon
Where it is: Lunar orbit, about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers) from Earth
When it was shared: Aug. 23, 2025 (originally taken Aug. 23, 1966)
Humanity’s first look at Earth from the moon didn’t come until Aug. 23, 1966, when this grainy, black-and-white image showed our planet as a crescent above the lunar horizon, appearing to rise as the camera-toting spacecraft moved in orbit.
At the time, it was a landmark image — and totally unplanned, according to NASA. The first view of Earth from the moon came from NASA‘s Lunar Orbiter 1, which transmitted the image to a tracking station at Robledo De Chavela near Madrid.
Lunar Orbiter 1, the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the moon, launched on an Atlas-Agena D rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Aug. 10, 1966, and entered lunar orbit four days later. It was on a cartographic mission, designed to photograph potentially safe landing sites on the moon for NASA’s Surveyor and Apollo missions, according to NASA. Although the spacecraft’s camera system wasn’t highly detailed, it took far more detailed views from lunar orbit than were possible from Earth through even the largest telescopes at the time.
Lunar Orbiter 1’s camera, manufactured by Eastman Kodak, featured an automated system that developed exposed film, scanned the images, and transmitted them to Earth. The camera was originally developed by the National Reconnaissance Office and was flown on the Cold War-era Samos spy satellites that were launched by the U.S. in the 1960s, according to NASA.
Lunar Orbiter 1 orbited the moon for 76 days until it deliberately crashed into the moon on Oct. 29, 1966.
Related: James Webb telescope captures one of the deepest-ever views of the universe
Lunar Orbiter 1’s camera snapped photographs of nine potential Apollo landing sites and seven backup sites. Earth as a crescent was photographed Aug. 23, 1966, at 16:35 GMT, when the spacecraft was on its 16th orbit, moments before it passed into the darkness of the moon’s far side.
Over two years later, on Christmas Eve, 1968, Bill Anders, a lunar module pilot on Apollo 8, the first lunar orbit mission, snapped the iconic “Earthrise” photo. This higher-resolution color image captured humanity’s attention as a cultural milestone, but it was Lunar Orbiter 1’s very similar photo of Earth as a crescent rising behind the moon, taken over two years earlier, that was the technical first.
For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.
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