The photo of the Earth from the Moon – Ansa
His last flight ended a few days ago in that intense blue that he had immortalized with his Hasseblad from the porthole of Apollo 8 on December 24, 1968 while he was flying over the Moon. In the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington, the plane piloted by William Anders, a 90-year-old major general and NASA astronaut, the author of one of the most iconic shots in history, sank. “We came here to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth,” he said.
75 hours, 48 minutes and 41 seconds had passed since the spacecraft, which left the Cape Canaveral launch pad, emerged from the dark side of the satellite and encountered a breathtaking sight. The Earth, a blue globe, seemed to rise from the blackness of space. With his camera, Anders took the first color photograph of our planet seen from space, a photograph not even foreseen by the rigid program entrusted to the astronauts.
Before Commander Frank Borman could say anything, the photo was taken. Classified by NASA as AS8-14-2383HR, it became known as “Earthrise” and is considered one of the most influential images ever taken, included by LIFE among the 100 photographs that changed the world. “Suddenly I looked out the window, and there was this beautiful sphere coming closer.”
Anders said the photo was his most significant contribution to the space program, because of the ecological and philosophical impact it had. Archibald MacLeish wrote in the columns of the New York Times: «To see the Earth as it truly is – small and blue and beautiful in the eternal silence in which it floats – is to see ourselves, all together, as knights on Earth, brothers aware of being such» .
Christmas 1968 brought humanity a new and different awareness of ourselves. In the hours in which the birth of the Son of God was being celebrated on Earth, science and technology gave us the opportunity to found universal brotherhood on a new, wonderful and dramatically strong piece of evidence. An awareness that is no longer just theoretical, but empirically evident in all its simple evidence.
William Anders has given us an icon painted on film, an instrument of prayer and meditation, which explains the words that Pope Francis gave us decades later in Laudato Sì (92): «Everything is related, and all of us human beings are united as brothers and sisters in a wonderful pilgrimage, bound by the love that God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us among ourselves, with tender affection, to brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth” .
In this fragment of history we can, in times of digital metamorphosis, forcefully tell ourselves how important an alliance pact between faith, science and technology can be where the latter are at the service of sense and meaning, of created beauty and uncreated truth. The dawn of the Earth is a leap forward towards a world of peace, a leap that today needs new vigor because that beautiful blue planet still groans and suffers in the pangs of childbirth.
