The "other" great Earthrise ...

An Earthrise taken by Apollo 10.CreditJSC/NASA

This is the "other" great Earthrise picture proving that there is no up or down in space, only space itself.  :)

But we also need to celebrate the many pathfinders who made this historic mission possible. Among the most critical were the crew of Apollo 10, who were asked to perform a full dress-rehearsal of the Apollo 11 mission just two months beforehand. Commander Thomas P. Stafford; John W. Young, the command module pilot; and Eugene A. Cernan, lunar module pilot, did almost everything that Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins did, but they stopped just before landing on the moon.

The iconic image was taken by astronaut William A. Anders on Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve in 1968. He was tasked with photographing the lunar landscape for a suitable spot for an eventual Apollo mission to land.CreditCreditNASA

This is where we live. In space. On a marble fortified against bottomless blackness by a shell of air and color, fragile and miraculous as a soap bubble.

In 1968, we Earthlings knew that already, sort of. But that abstract notion became visceral on Christmas Eve of that year. While scouting landing spots on the moon, the astronauts of Apollo 8 — Frank Borman, William A. Anders and James A. Lovell, Jr. — spied the shiny blue Earth rising over the ash-colored lunar mountains like a cosmic smiley face. That image, transmitted from space, went on to capture the imagination of the world: Earthrise.

Something to think about, right?