In 1968, astronauts on Apollo 8 took a picture of the earth with the moon’s landscape in the foreground. In 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts snapped a photo consisting of just the earth. The former photograph was known as “Earthrise,” the latter as “Whole Earth.” Both became instant icons of the age. “Earthrise,” with its lunar foreground, signified that space was the frontier and suggested that the United States had won the space race and the Cold War. “Whole Earth,” by contrast, was earthcentric, depicting identifiable environments, some known to be in peril, and de-emphasized the place of the United States since it centered on Africa and the Middle East. It symbolized a change of direction by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from exclusive emphasis on the nature of space to greater attention to nature on earth, such as through the launch of Landsat satellites to track environmental change. Between the taking of the two photos was the first Earth Day in 1970, which sparked the modern environmental movement that influenced NASA.
