On January 31, 2014 the Curiosity Rover sent back the first photos of Earth from the surface of Mars. The earth is that atomic, glowing dot northwest of center in a sea of nothing. Stop for a second to consider just how remarkable this is.
Imagine the first time we saw the earth floating in space 45 years ago.
On Christmas Eve, 1968, Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders snapped the first image of “earthrise” while orbiting the moon. Our home was a green and blue marble from the hostile, icy moon. But this remarkable view was the first time humans were able to shift our perspective and see ourselves in the cosmic plain. For a year that was one of the most tumultuous in 20th century American memory, earthrise was a moment of utter stillness.
Frank Borman, the commander of Apollo 8 commented, “Mighty nice view from out here.”
Bill Anders was 238,000 miles away from home in 1968 when he took that picture. Mars Curiosity sent its photo back to us from roughly 140,000,000 miles past that. Yes, that is the correct number of zeroes. Consider that for a minute. I’ll wait.
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That tiny white speck is a planet that holds seven billion people. I’m willing to bet nearly all of those people have looked up at the sky at some point wondering where they fit in everything. For centuries, we’ve explored terra incognito with ships of cotton and wood, and steel and glass, mapped every inch of our home. We industrialize and evolve, and we range farther and farther from home, out of our atmosphere and into the unknown. With every generation, we catch new glimpses of the vast universe that surrounds us. We explore because, just maybe, in answering the unknown around us, we will satiate the unknown within us.
I saw the Milky Way for the first time when I was 25. It was terrifying in its alien beauty, the pale ghost of other systems billions of miles away looking back at us. I realized how ridiculously, laughably small we were. And I wanted to see more of it. Curiosity’s photo from 140,000,000 miles away brought back that same shock and wonder.
Being earthbound is a deep, dull ache I can feel in my bones.
We are minuscule specks on a minute rock circling a giant star in a far flung arm of a small, milky galaxy that sits next to other galaxies with their own minute rocks and constellations we’ve only dreamed about. But we are the pale blue dot, the blue marble, the earthrise.
We are so small and we are so infinite.
So yes, Mr. Borman, it is a mighty nice view.
More on Curiosity’s Earth photography can be found here and here.
Read more about Earthrise and learn how the photo came to be.