Apollo 8 photographed the famous Earthrise over the Moon.
The photograph was taken by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during Apollo 8’s fourth orbit of the Moon. Anders, Frank Borman, and James Lovell were the first humans to travel to lunar orbit. As their spacecraft emerged from behind the Moon, they saw Earth rising above the lunar horizon and captured the scene on color film.
The image became known as Earthrise and turned Earth’s small, colorful appearance into a powerful symbol of planetary unity and fragility. Although the crew saw the event through the spacecraft windows, the photograph’s composition was helped by the spacecraft’s movement and by astronauts rotating the camera toward the horizon.
Earthrise is sometimes attributed to Apollo 11 because that mission made the first landing. Apollo 8 came earlier and never descended to the lunar surface.