First Full Earth Globe Photograph ? - Unmanned Spaceflight.com

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First Full Earth Globe Photograph ?

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Guest_PhilCo126_*	Jan 13 2006, 09:41 PM Post #1
Guests	Just curious to know which spacecraft took the very first full Earth globe view ? Maybe one of the ATS satellites ? ( Application Technology Satellite )

Bob Shaw View Member Profile	Jan 13 2006, 10:25 PM Post #2
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239	QUOTE (PhilCo126 @ Jan 13 2006, 10:41 PM) Just curious to know which spacecraft took the very first full Earth globe view ? Maybe one of the ATS satellites ? ( Application Technology Satellite ) There's been a previous discussion about this - the consensus was that the USAF DODGE vehicle and a Soviet satellite were the first! See #14191 Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!

Guest_PhilCo126_*	Jan 14 2006, 01:44 PM Post #3
Guests	Bob, I can't see the topic with that number ... I did find something about a Navy Dodge Test satellite but that one was launched in July 1967, while the ATS satellites are 1966 ... Do You have a link ?

DDAVIS View Member Profile	Jan 15 2006, 01:23 AM Post #4
Member Group: Members Posts: 194 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 10	Here are some early 'landmark' Earth photos: http://www.donaldedavis.com/2003NEW/NEWSTUFF/DDEARTH.html

David View Member Profile	Jan 15 2006, 04:26 AM Post #5
Member Group: Members Posts: 809 Joined: 11-March 04 Member No.: 56	QUOTE (DDAVIS @ Jan 15 2006, 01:23 AM) Here are some early 'landmark' Earth photos: http://www.donaldedavis.com/2003NEW/NEWSTUFF/DDEARTH.html Note the Zond 7 image, which remarkably shows a full Aral Sea -- something which maybe no one now alive will ever see again...

Bob Shaw

Jan 15 2006, 10:04 PM

Post #6

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Some details of DODGE (launched 1 July 1967):

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dodge.htm

And of ATS-1 (launched 7 December 1966):

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/ATS.html
http://roland.lerc.nasa.gov/~dglover/sat/alltext.html

The second link includes a statement that ATS-1 carried a B&W camera, and the image below shows the Pacific Ocean, *not* the usual full-colour Atlantic view. There is also a statement to the effect that ATS-3 (launched on 5 November 1967) carried a colour camera.

So, it looks like the first 'full Earth' image was taken by the Soviet Cosmos in a Molniya orbit, then ATS-1 took the first good B&W image from GEO, then DODGE took a poor colour image from not-quite GEO, then ATS-3 took the first good colour image from GEO on 10 November 1967!

ATS-3 may still be alive, as may DODGE.

Bob Shaw

Attached thumbnail(s)

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Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!

Bob Shaw View Member Profile	Jan 15 2006, 10:10 PM Post #7
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239	Boeing has some interesting tidbits, too: http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/...76/ats/ats.html Bob Shaw Attached image(s) -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!

hendric View Member Profile	Jan 16 2006, 06:04 AM Post #8
Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93	QUOTE (David @ Jan 14 2006, 10:26 PM) Note the Zond 7 image, which remarkably shows a full Aral Sea -- something which maybe no one now alive will ever see again... For those who didn't know: http://www.thewaterpage.com/aral.htm 19 meters, that's ~60 feet. -------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks -- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality.

ljk4-1 View Member Profile	Jan 16 2006, 03:40 PM Post #9
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430	Good ol' Exploring Space with a Camera has a whole bunch of early Earth from space images, starting with the ATS-3 color image of November, 1967 here: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-168/contents.htm -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

Toma B

Jan 16 2006, 05:21 PM

Post #10

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QUOTE (David @ Jan 15 2006, 07:26 AM)

Note the Zond 7 image, which remarkably shows a full Aral Sea -- something which maybe no one now alive will ever see again...

That is really sad story about us...
Windswept Shores of the Aral Sea
The Shrinking Aral Sea
Retreating Aral Sea Coastlines
Aral Sea
Fires Near the Aral Sea
Dust over the Aral Sea
Caspian Sea
“Rebirth Island Joins the Mainland

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The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
Jules H. Poincare

My "Astrophotos" gallery on flickr...

Guest_BruceMoomaw_*	Jan 21 2006, 11:31 PM Post #11
Guests	One of the 1966 issues of National Geographic had an article on the photos from DODGE. They were hideously fuzzy, but they were full-disk -- and in color. The Soviet Molnyas got some fuzzy black-and-white photos of Earth from their elongated 12-hour orbits, but I don't know if any of them were full-disk. Lunar Orbiter 1, of course, got its famous black-and-white photo of the half-earth from lunar orbit in summer 1966 -- quite good, except for the scanning lines across it -- and Surveyor 3 got some extremely fuzzy full-disk color photos of Earth from the lunar surface in April 1967 (including some taken during a lunar eclipse). The first decent-quality whole-Earth photos, however, definitely came back from ATS-1 in December 1966, and the first decent-quality color ones from ATS-3 the following November.

Guest_PhilCo126_*	Jan 22 2006, 08:44 AM Post #12
Guests	May 30, 1966 by a Soviet Weather satellite ? Which satellite was that exactly ?

Bob Shaw View Member Profile	Jan 22 2006, 02:14 PM Post #13
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239	QUOTE (PhilCo126 @ Jan 22 2006, 09:44 AM) May 30, 1966 by a Soviet Weather satellite ? Which satellite was that exactly ? Not so much a weather satellite as a telecoms chappie in the USSR's unique Molniya orbit - these had a very high apogee over the northern hemisphere, and a low southern perigee. The idea was that the USSR, being a northern entity, got more bang for the, er, Rouble, that way. Molniya satellites could also carry cameras, which again gave good views of the bits of the world that interested the people who built the things. In common with most Soviet-era satellites the generic 'Cosmos' title was used for practically anything which reached orbit, while the name 'Molniya' itself was normally reserved specifically for the comsats. You did, however, get Cosmos vehicles in Molniya orbits, some of which were broken Molniyas which they didn't care to admit had failed. I previously posted the DODGE images here, and Bruce found the Russian one - I'll try to find the darn things and post a working link! Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!

ljk4-1 View Member Profile	Jan 23 2006, 04:01 PM Post #14
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430	AES ''MOLNIYA-1'' TRANSMITS THE EARTH'S IMAGE http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntr..._1966084822.pdf -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853