Apollo 8, 40 Years Later

"Leaving Home: The Legacy of Apollo 8"
Space.com (December 24, 2008)

"Orbiting the moon 40 years ago on Christmas Eve, 1968, Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders snapped a picture that would become an icon of the 20th century: Earth, rising beyond the Moon's barren and bleached horizon into the blackness of space. To Anders and his crewmates, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, the loveliness of their home world was magnified by its smallness; from almost a quarter-million miles away, they could hide it behind an outstretched thumb.

"And yet, as Anders later said, in going to the Moon they had barely left home.

"Forty years later that famous Earthrise photo...."

This four-decade retrospective was a trip down memory lane for me. For others, it's a pretty good background the story to date, of humanity's first steps outward. The article ends with a look at the robotic explorers on Mars: "...they've given us a message that, if we heed it, will take us farther than we can imagine.

"It's the unspoken message in every transmission from our robotic surrogates: Follow me."