Earth's very first photo from outer space! 

First photo captured from space of Earth

American scientists and researchers in New Mexico were the first to take photos from space, although the Soviet Union was the first to launch a satellite into orbit.

During the first flight of the V-2 missile from White Sands Missile Range, soldiers and scientists took the first visual pictures of Earth from space using a 35-millimeter motion picture camera. They were taken at an altitude of 65 miles, just above the accepted beginning of outer space. Due to the steel cassette encasing the film, it survived the crash landing.

This discovery was not groundbreaking, but it was one of the earliest discoveries of the Earth's curvature. Observations of the spherical horizon were made from 13.7 miles above ground by the Explorer II balloon in 1935. It was eleven years later when the V-2 missile fired the first shots of the Earth in space.

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States fired dozens of confiscated German V-2 missiles to improve the nation's missile defense system. During this period, scientists equipped some of the missiles with scientific instruments for studying the atmosphere. The space program returned more than 1,000 images between 1946 and 1950, some taken at altitudes higher than 100 miles.

Several of these images were analyzed after they returned to Earth by photographer Clyde Holliday, the man who designed the first camera to take pictures from space. Geology and meteorology were taught much by the photographs, but imagery itself was also taught much.

As space exploration has progressed, photography has evolved. On top of learning to conduct scientific experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts are also trained in taking pictures. Our understanding of our planet can be enhanced by images, not just from other planets. Photographs of ice caps, storms, geologic features, and much more are taken from the International Space Station.

In a 1950 National Geographic article, Holiday portrayed the main pictures from space as, "how our Earth would seem to guests from another planet coming in on a spaceship."
Many years after the fact, Apollo 8 space travelers caught one more popular picture, showing the Earth far away on a dark foundation of profound space. It was an indication of how far humankind had come in such a brief time frame.

Before long, space telescopes like the James Webb Telescope will take photos that companion back to the actual starting points of the universe. Today, 73 years after that V-2 rocket took off high up, we glance back at the historical backdrop of room photography and forward into an unseen nation of investigation.