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Emily Lakdawalla • Jul 14, 2008

Earth, nearly 40 years ago

A very long time ago a reader wrote to me to point out that my Images of Earth from Planetary Spacecraft page was lacking most of the photos taken by the Zond program (the unmanned Soviet lunar program that was flying at the same time as the American Apollo program). I have (finally) taken many photos from Don Mitchell's excellent page on Soviet Moon images and updated my page. Here's a gem, from August 11, 1969. Since that time, world population has increased by more than three billion...

Zond 7 image of Earth

Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography (MIIGAiK); caption by Don Mitchell

Zond 7 image of Earth
Zond-7 photographed Earth on August 9 and performed two photo sessions at the Moon on August 11, 1969. It shot 35 pictures with the SKD camera and 300 mm objective, on 5.6 by 5.6-centimeter frames of color and panchromatic film.

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