Apr 08, 2026
3 min read
In December 1968, as Apollo 8 orbited the Moon, astronaut William Anders captured a picture that may be more powerful than any word:...
In December 1968, while Apollo 8 was orbiting the Moon, astronaut William Anders took a photo that would eventually become more powerful than any speech. This is Earth Rising, where the Earth appears on the Moon's horizon. More than half a century later, Artemis 2 takes over and Earth rises again from the far side of the Moon.
Anders' film reached a violent world.The United States had one of its most violent years with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, racial violence in many cities and societies devastated by the Vietnam War.The president of the world, Mr. Donald Trump, is waging an open war against Iran that threatens to spread to the Middle East, another in Ukraine, and an explosion in Europe that has tried to unify NATO.
Anders' photo serves as a moral break.And now, 400,000 kilometers from the Earth, we remember that there are no borders to mark Donbas, right, left or races.Just a blue marble floats in the dark, while discussions are going on through the microscope.Maybe that's why we find that photo from the 1960s, like the one taken at 12:41 a.m. Tuesday in Spain from the window of the Orion spacecraft, both fascinating and unsettling.
Apollo 8 orbited the moon 10 times, and in one of them, Anders took a bright blue stretched out against the deep blackness of space, enhanced by the horizon of the desolate moon in front: "We came all this way to explore the moon, and most importantly to return to Earth," announced Anders.
When Apollo 8 left the far side of the moon, the crew did not expect to see the Earth appear above the horizon, and not like now, when many months before takeoff the exact time it would occur was already known. At that time, the module was oriented in such a way that the planet was not visible from the main windows. Then Anders looked out of one of the side windows and saw the Earth rising above the gray horizon of the Moon. It was somethingunexpected, they would confess. The astronaut quickly asked for a camera. He first took a black and white photo, but then asked for a color film while his partner Jim Lovell helped him change the lens and film. In the audio recordings of the mission, you can even hear the surprise and a little rush among the astronauts before the ship continued to rotate and the planet disappeared from the window.
In Figure 2, Artemis, another blue planet with white clouds billowing over Australia and Oceania, is set on the lunar surface, reminiscent of the Death Star and a giant bloody clay tennis court.
Dr. Nicky Fox, of NASA's Science Instrumentation Division, said: "Our star has returned images that are fascinating and valuable, and will inspire generations.
The crew shared their memories live yesterday, "while they're still fresh," NASA said, of their time on the moon.The astronauts documented impact craters, ancient lava flows and surface fractures to help scientists study their geological evolution.They also monitored differences in the color, brightness and texture of the terrain.And they reported six meteor bursts that hit the dark surface.on: Six hours of photos of parts of the moon and eyepieces never before seen by the human eye.
NASA mission specialist Christina Koch said she sees rising lunar dust, or particles of regolith, the material covering the Moon, rising from the surface and floating by electrostatic forces.He and mission pilot Victor Glover also noted that after passing the far side, they saw Earth's glow hitting the spacecraft's windows: "It was so bright, so bright, it looked wrong," while "the gray of the moon and the black of space seemed to match," Glover said.
Koch also said that the Moon became a "sponge of light" that illuminated the ship's field of vision "when Earth got close enough."
During the flight, the astronauts discovered that the satellite is not as gray as it appears, but can also be "brown and dull"."I've done a few announcements and called it like seeing the Grand Canyon, where you can see all kinds of signs," Glover said.
The images also include a spectacular solar eclipse.From the crew's point of view, there was a time when the Moon grew large enough to block the Sun, creating a 54-minute total eclipse.The corona creates a bright halo around the dark lunar disk, revealing details of the outer atmosphere that its brightness would normally hide.The crown is protected by special eclipse glasses.
In another high-resolution image, the moon's geological features can be seen in detail.And even in the eastern part, the two smaller craters proposed by the team were named Integrity and Carol.The first in honor of the Orion ship that took them farther than any human in history, and the second in honor of Captain Red Wiseman's wife, who died of cancer in 2020.The International Astronomical Union must now accept the team's proposal.
Now NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian space agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are back home.Just before 7:30 p.m.(Spanish time) they abandoned the moon's gravity, which they used as a slingshot to promote a return that will take place in Spain in the early hours of Friday to Saturday.
Shortly after the launch, flight control in Houston hosted a space conversation with current residents of the International Space Station (ISS): NASA astronauts Jessica Meyer, Jack Hathaway, and Chris Williams, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot.Another milestone in space historyFirst radio communication between a lunar spacecraft and a spacecraftGlover, who has experience working in an orbiting laboratory, commented that Orion's biggest problem on the space station is the lack of space: "We don't have another module to avoid a space conflict. So basically everything we do starts with a space conflict."
Para Koch, la mujer que más días consecutivos ha pasado en la Estación Espacial Internacional, la principal diferencia con la Orión fue poder apreciar mejor «cuánta oscuridad» rodea a la Tierra, lo que «la hace aún más especial».
At 2:03 a.m. (Spanish waters), the ship's thrusters were scheduled to be engaged for the first of three repairs, correcting the ship's course and making a more precise approach to land. Koch and Hansen will be the flight observers to review reentry procedures and systems.
After returning to Earth, the crew must endure a rapid reentry and high temperatures before splashing into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, where they will be met by a recovery team that includes personnel from NASA and the Department of Defense, who will return them to dry land.
