The Earth from space is always a stunning sight, and as the technology develops it gets
even better, if a little voyeuristic.
Hey guys, Amy here talking space with you today on DNews, and specifically talking about
looking at space.
Space-based photography wasn’t a top priority when we first started leaving our planet but
it quickly became a boon to science and a hugely popular spinoff, though the first images
weren’t exactly the stunning ones we’re used to seeing today.
The Earth was first imaged from space in 1946, from a 35-millimeter motion picture camera
mounted on a recovered Nazi V-2 rocket launched from the US Army’s White Sands Proving Ground
in New Mexico.
It’s a grainy black and white image that doesn’t look too impressive, but it’s
pretty historic.
Fast forward to the first manned spaceflight program in America, NASA’s Mercury program,
where photography was an afterthought.
No one knew whether astronauts would be able to function in microgravity let alone use
a camera, and there were concerns that astronauts snapping pictures in orbit would be misconstrued
by the Soviet Union as spy photography and start a new war.
NASA gave John Glenn an Ansco Autoset 35mm camera, manufactured by Minolta, that was
purchased in a local drug store.
The only thing space-aged were the modifications that made it possible for Glenn to actually
use it in a pressure suit, which he did during his 1962 orbital flight.
Finally thinking about imagery, NASA sent its mid-1960s Gemini astronauts into space
with Swedish-made Hasselblad 550C medium format cameras, again, standard technology of the
day.
The Hasselblads proved popular enough to fly to the Moon on Apollo missions.
The first mission to photograph the Earth from the Moon, Apollo 8, took Hasselblad EL
electric cameras with them.
The astronauts set the distance, lens aperture, and shutter speed for the shot then let the
camera shoot and advance the film itself.
There were also multiple lenses on these cameras, an 80mm normal lens and a 250mm telephoto
lens.
Apollo 11, the first mission to land on the Moon, added a Kodak stereo close-up camera
to the photography roster.
Of course, none of these images could show us any real detail of the planet.
Major features could be resolved like mountains and cloud formations, but we didn’t see
cars on freeways.
More than 40 years later, some modern photography experiments don’t show much more detail.
NASA’s High Definition Earth Viewing experiment uses commercial HD cameras mounted on the
ISS to show a livestream of the planet, though all we can really see is clouds and major
geologic features.
And a lot of ocean.
But UrtheCast has taken viewing the Earth from space to new levels.
Specifically, new levels of detail.
The company’s cameras on the ISS don’t show the majesty of our planet, they resolve
details up to three feet across.
That’s enough detail to see individual cars, and because it’s a streaming view, we can
actually see them driving along roads in full colour, though the length of an individual
shot is limited to 60 seconds.
It’s a stunning development that UrtheCast hopes will highlight the things that draw
humanity together -- the living environment, humanitarian projects, and social events.
There’s another side to this, though, and that’s the prospect that this technology
brings with it real-time monitoring, keeping an eye on, say terrorist groups, which means
that terrorist groups could keep an eye on targets, which is sort of the scary way to
look at this incredible tech.
So what do you guys think about the evolution of Earth photography from space?
Is it highlighting all that’s beautiful in the world or becoming a little too much
like Big Brother is watching us?
Let us know in the comments below!
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