On this day in space! Oct. 24, 1946: V-2 rocket takes 1st photos of Earth from space

On October 24, 1946, a V-2 rocket captured the first-ever photo of Earth from space.

While these grainy, black-and-white images might not look like much today, they were a huge deal at the time, because no one had ever seen Earth from space before.

The V-2 rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It carried a 35-millimeter motion picture camera that captured a new frame every second and a half. The rocket soared to an altitude of about 65 miles before falling back to Earth.

Both the rocket and the camera were destroyed after crashing into the Earth at a speed of about 340 miles per hour. But the film survived because it was protected inside a steel case. Scientists had to drive out into the New Mexico desert to retrieve the film. When they saw the images for the first time, the scientists were literally jumping up and down with joy.

This photo is the first view of Earth from space taken by a camera on a U.S. Army V-2 rocket launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on Oct. 24, 1946. (Image credit: U.S. Army)How it mattered

The ability to photograph Earth from space drove both an expanded interest to continue pushing into space and led to unexpected societal changes with regards to how humanity considered its home planet.

For military and intelligence agencies, the potential now existed for reconnaissance at a far larger scale than what was possible with high-altitude aircraft. That capability expanded to agriculture and meteorological purposes, eventually making Earth observation one of the most common reasons satellites and space stations are deployed into orbit today.

Earth photography from space also gave birth to the environmental movement, as people began to see the planet differently. The fragility of this orb became more apparent, as now Earth appeared a "blue marble" set against an endless black void.

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.