Some two billion years ago, the first photosynthetic algae evolved the ability to respond to light—the brilliant Sun by day, the spectral Moon by night. Around 700 million years ago, primitive eye-pits appeared; then, during the Cambrian era, arthropod-like creatures gazed at the sky through true eyes, sensing the lunar rising and setting with their arthropod-like comprehension. So it continued, into the succeeding chapters of life featuring mammals, primates, hominins, and Homo sapiens, the last of them plotting the Moon’s movements and mapping the pockmarked terrain of Earth’s companion.
Then, 50 years ago, the perspective flipped. Apollo 8 took off on a figure-eight pattern around the Moon and, on December 24, 1968, three NASA astronauts peered out at the first Earthrise in the history of life. Most of the reminiscences now popping up across the media focus the Earth itself, seen gibbous and gorgeous from afar. But the true power of the image comes from its juxtaposition of two views never seen before: our blue planet, wrapped with air and water and hope, contrasted with the extraordinary gray desolation of the Moon.
To feel that power fully, you need to view Earthrise not as a still photograph but as an event, an experience immersed in its time and place. I had an opportunity recently to do just that at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Carter Emmart, the director of visualization at the museum, has put together an Apollo 8 tribute that combines the original astronaut imagery with documentary clips about the United States in 1968 and, more vitally, detailed simulations of the Apollo 8 trajectory around the Moon. The recreation lets you watch the lunar landscape gliding by below, synced to the astronauts’ conversations with mission control, to bring back the transcendent totality of the moment when the Earth emerged from behind the Moon’s dusty rim.
Most people will not have the chance to visit the museum, but they can recreate much of the event drawing on resources that are readily available online–some of them created with Emmart’s assistance. He has provided a helpful list of those resources, which I’m including at the end of this post. But first I wanted to share some of his thoughts on reliving Apollo 8, along with the memorable words of the Apollo 8 astronauts themselves.
It seems bittersweet, remembering such a grand moment when we haven’t been back to the Moon since Apollo 17. Do you feel that way, too?
Emmart: People say, “We could have been to Mars by the mid-80s if we’d kept the direction going.” The truth is, the goal of going to the Moon was attacked by politicians as soon as it was announced. But really, those are minor details. Apollo 8 is a monument and it’s not going away. You can visit the Smithsonian and see the pieces of Apollo, but the real monument is in the sky. It reminds us that this world is a bridge to the universe. The Earth is just another orb, we are in the Moon’s sky just as the Moon is in ours.
The future is happening slower than we had hoped, but our capabilities with visualization allow us to go there another way.
'An idealized recreation of the Earthrise moment, courtesy of NASA Science Visualization Studio. This is part of a
