So back on the 7th of December 1972 , Appollo 17 was about 28,000 miles away from the surface of the Earth, and they decided HEY! Let's tweet this cool photo of the Earth that nobody but us can see!
(Of course I kid, everybody knows that MySpace was the *only* Social Media place back then)
Do you think they high-fived after seeing that? I have to believe I would want to high-five something, a colleague, the bulkhead, the instrument panel, anything. I'd be too excited.
Now a new Blue Marble was released just a few weeks ago – but it's a composite image of six orbits of the Earth, not the one shot Instagram masterpiece that the Apollo 17 ninjas got back in 1972. Check it out:
Check THIS out – this is the Hasselblad camera, a model just like the one the astronauts on Apollo 17 used to snap the first Blue Marble:
I put this together for your enjoyment and study – here are the 1972 and Eastern Hemisphere Blue Marbles (2012) side-by-side. If you click the image, it opens up to a manageable size (1800 pixels wide) for viewing. Check it out!
Now just remember, these are all courtesy of NASA and NOAA, so make sure you attribute if you share! Plus, it's just awesome to point someone to the NASA and NOAA websites; to be nerd is to be awesome.
That's right, you heard it here first. Well, the nerd thing anyway.