lunarorbiter

Video: Modern Day Earthrise in HD, as Seen by the Japanese Lunar Orbiter

Forget sunrises... what we need to see more of on Instagram and our Facebook newsfeeds is Earthrises. Of course, they're a bit harder to capture, but spectacular footage like this high-definition video shot by the Japanese Lunar Orbiter can give even the most beautiful beach sunrise a run for its money.

NASA Takes You Inside Apollo 8, Recreates Experience of Taking Iconic Earthrise Photo

When it comes to iconic imagery, there are few individual photographers who can best NASA. From the pale blue dot, to the blue marble, to the amazing photo of Bruce McCandless II floating out into space on the first ever untethered space walk, NASA's got quite a repository of amazing imagery.

One of those iconic images, dubbed AS8-14-2383 but better known as Earthrise, is about to turn 45 years old on Christmas Eve. And so NASA thought it appropriate to share the story of how luck and teamwork helped the astronauts of Apollo 8 capture this photo.

A Glimpse Inside the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project

There's an abandoned McDonalds in California that's stuffed with 48,000 pounds of 70mm tape. These tapes contain never-before-seen ultra-high-res photographs of the moon shot by the Lunar Orbiter project 40 years ago. Rather than ship the film back to Earth, scientists decided to scan them on the spaceship, beam them back losslessly, and then record the data onto magnetic tape. Not wanting to reveal the precision of its spy satellites, the US government decided to mark the images as classified.