Apollo 17 caught Earth looking like a glass marble
On 7 December 1972, roughly 29,400 kilometers from Earth, an Apollo 17 Hasselblad froze Africa from the Mediterranean to Antarctica. The cropped, rotated frame became one of history's most reproduced photographs—and a lasting banner for the planet's fragility.
The Blue Marble is NASA image AS17-148-22727, taken aboard Apollo 17's command module America about five hours after launch on the way to the Moon. From roughly 29,400 kilometers, the face of Earth ran from the Mediterranean to Antarctica—the first Apollo chance to photograph the south polar ice cap, lit as the December solstice neared. Africa sat in noon daylight; a cyclone churned in the Indian Ocean; Madagascar and the Arabian Peninsula stood clear. Astronauts said Earth looked the size of a glass marble. Widely published versions are cropped, rotated with south up relative to the capsule, and chromatically adjusted.
Harrison Schmitt likely made the exposure with a 70-millimeter Hasselblad 500 EL, 80-millimeter Zeiss planar lens, Kodak Ektachrome, f/2.8, and 1/250 second, though NASA credits the whole crew—Cernan, Evans, and Schmitt—and each has claimed the shot. Schmitt later linked the timing to his amateur meteorology. Released 23 December 1972, four days after splashdown, the photo filled holiday papers; the Boston Globe used it on its Christmas cover, and the name Blue Marble stuck. Archivist Mike Gentry ranks it among the most widely distributed images ever, partly because a human, not a satellite, pressed the shutter.
Stewart Brand had campaigned since 1966 for a whole-Earth photograph, selling buttons asking why none existed, and used a 1968 ATS-3 satellite image for the Whole Earth Catalog. Blue Marble arrived amid 1970s environmental activism and became a symbol of isolation and interdependence—the overview effect that erases borders. Later NASA "Blue Marble" releases, including 2012 composites, stitch many low-orbit frames; they cannot capture the whole globe in one exposure. The 1972 still remains the iconic single disk.
Source: The Blue Marble
