On October 24, 1946, not long after the end of World War II and years before the Sputnik satellite opened the space age, a group of soldiers and scientists in the New Mexico desert saw something new and wonderful—the first pictures of Earth as seen from space.

The grainy, black-and-white photos were taken from an altitude of 65 miles by a 35-millimeter motion picture camera riding on a V-2 missile launched from the White Sands Missile Range. Snapping a new frame every second and a half, the rocket-borne camera climbed straight up, then fell back to Earth minutes later, slamming into the ground at 500 feet per second. The camera itself was smashed, but the film, protected in a steel cassette, was unharmed.

Over the next few years V-2 rockets were used to obtain more than 1000 images of the Earth from alitudes reaching as high as 100 miles, the images were widely published and led Clyde Holliday to make the following predictions:

“Results of these tests now are pointing to a time when cameras may be mounted on guided missiles for scouting enemy territory in war, mapping inaccessible regions of the earth in peacetime, and even photographing cloud formations, storm fronts, and overcast areas over an entire continent in a few hours.”

He even speculated that:

“the entire land area of the globe might be mapped in this way.”

I wonder if he were alive today what he would think about Google Earth :)

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Filed under: astronomy, science, spaceflight