“WE’RE not the first to discover this, but we’d like to confirm, from the crew of Apollo 17, that the world is round,” said astronaut Eugene Cernan during the 1972 mission when the first clear image of the whole illuminated Earth was taken.
The picture, dubbed the “blue marble” by NASA astronauts, has likely “been seen by more human beings than any other image in the world”, says Mike Gentry, a photo archivist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. “It was a symbol of hope for the future, unity and of a healthy planet.”
Now geographers and…
