[MUSIC] Hi, and welcome to introduction to the orbital perspective. I'm course instructor, Ron Garan. In this course, we are going to explore journey through space, 100 year journey through space, that actually we're all on right now. Now, this journey began on December 24, 1968. And it will take us to 2068 to reach our destination. But before we get into all that, I want to talk to you about one specific image. I want to talk to you about NASA image designation AS8142383. That image changed my life. It changed your life. In fact, I think it's changed the entire course of human history. Now, photographs can change the way we see ourselves. They can change our perspective. They can change the way we see our place in the universe. And there's probably no image that changed the way we see ourselves more than NASA image designation AS8142383, more commonly known as Earthrise. The story of Earthrise begins on a winter morning of December 21st, 1968 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Atop the tallest, the heaviest, and the most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status, the Saturn V, sat the crew of Apollo 8. Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot, Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot, Bill Anders. The aim of the mission, to be the first crewed space craft to successfully reach the moon, enter into orbit around it and, of course, return safely to Earth. Three days later, on December 24th, Christmas Eve 1968, when Apollo 8 came out from behind the Moon on their fourth orbit, the crew witnessed Earthrise. [MUSIC] Frank Borman was the first to see the Earth rising above the lunar horizon and he called in excitement to the others, taking a black and white photograph in the process. Bill Anders took the more famous color photo, and it was all captured on the flight voice recorder. >> My God, look at that picture over there. That is the Earth coming up. Wow, that's pretty. Hey, don't take, that's not scheduled. [LAUGH] >> You got a color film, Jim? Hand me a roll of color quick, will you? >> Man, that's quite rude. >> Quick. >> I wonder if they really knew what was happening, if they knew the significance of that moment. They just became the first humans in history to see the Earth as a whole planet, and the first to capture that for the rest of us. Some say that Earthrise is the most important photograph ever taken, and it has been credited with helping to inspire the first Earth Day in 1970. And it was selected as the first of Life Magazine's 100 Photographs That Changed The World. It could be the most influential environmental photograph ever taken. Bill Anders, after being asked about the photo, I think summed it up perfectly. He said, we came all this way to explore the Moon, and what we discovered in the process is the Earth. This image revolutionized how we see the world, how we see ourselves with its simple message that we are one people, traveling on one planet towards one common future. I would argue that this image changed the course of human history for the better. Now you have to realize that Apollo 8 came at the end of 1968, a year that had seen much strife in the United States and most of the world. The year saw political assassinations and massive unrest in the streets of Europe and America. Yet Time magazine chose the crew of Apollo 8 as their men of the year for 1968, recognizing them as those people who most influenced events. One of those assassinations in 1968 was Dr. Martin Luther King. And precisely one year before the astronauts were hurdling through space on the way to the moon, Dr. King gave a sermon. The Christmas sermon on peace which gives words to what Earthrise evokes. >> It really boils down to this, that all life is interrelated. We're all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny that whatever affects one directly- >> Yes, sir. >> Affects all indirectly. We aren't going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality. >> The interrelated structure of all reality. This is not a cliche or a philosophy. This is the reality of the world that we live in, this is fact. To illustrate this fact, I want to take you on a journey to space and back. And to try and put these words into some context. And so, we're unfortunately going to have to wait until the next lesson before we do that, before we go on our journey to space and back. So, we'll see you next lesson.