This August 23rd marks exactly 58 years since the first image of the planet Earth was taken from the Moon, taken by NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft.
The first photo of the Earth seen from the Moon was transmitted on August 23rd, 1966 from this spacecraft –integrated in the second American program of automatic recognition of the Moon–, to the Robledo de Chavela space station (Madrid).
The Lunar Orbiter 1 was launched on August 10th, 1966 and ended its mission on October 29th, 1966. It was the first lunar photographic laboratory with the capacity to modify its orbit.
It obtained 207 photographs of the Moon from the landing zones of the Apollo missions. It was deliberately launched against the lunar surface to avoid interfering with the Lunar Orbiter 2 probe.
