The first photos from the James Webb Space Telescope are impressive. The Southern Ring Nebula, Stephen’s Quintet or the Carina Nebula are clearer and provide important information for scientists. The James Webb is the culmination of decades of effort and a hunger to discover what lies beyond our planet. A need that materialized, for the first time, with the first photograph taken from space in 1946.
Before the creation of NASA or the beginning of the space race, scientists and soldiers from the United States Army fired a missile from the desert of New Mexico in order to obtain the first photograph of the Earth. The Americans used a V-2 rocket confiscated from Nazi Germany and integrated a 35mm film camera, developed by Clyde Hollidayan engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
The rocket helped position the camera at a height of 105 kilometers, a distance that barely exceeded the Karman line that establishes the limit between the atmosphere and outer space. The camera released the shutter and captured the first photograph of the curvature of our planet. According to Holliday, this image showed what our Earth would look like to visitors from another planet arriving in a spaceship.
A 35mm camera as an alternative to the James Webb in 1946
In accordance with Air & Space Magazine, the camera captured a new frame every second and a half. Both the rocket and the camera shattered once they hit the surface of our planet. Fred Rulli, a 19-year-old soldier, recovered the cassette with the tape surviving thanks to a protective casing.
When Rulli brought the material to the scientists they went crazy. “They were ecstatic and jumping around like children,” he said in an interview. Afterwards, the photos were projected on a screen and everyone lost their minds. It was the first time an image of the Earth was obtained from outer space. Previous attempts barely reached 14 miles with the help of Explorer II, a high-altitude manned balloon.
Hollyday and other scientists at Johns Hopkins University analyzed the contents of the cassette and stitched multiple frames together to create a panoramic photo. The final result covers a distance of 4,345 kilometers and shows a part of Mexico, the Gulf of California and several points of interest in the United States. The total area captured by the camera exceeds 2 million square kilometers.
The photograph was captured with the help of a Nazi rocket
The first photograph from space was captured on July 26, 1948 with the help of a V-2 rocket. After the end of World War II, the US military confiscated the secret projects of Nazi Germany, including its rocket program. The V-2, an abbreviation of Vergeltungswaffe 2 (Retaliation Weapon 2), was the first long-range ballistic missile designed to attack allied cities.
Before taking Holliday’s camera into space, the V-2 caused the death of thousands of people in Antwerp and London. Although it represented one of the most important advances of the war, the contribution of this missile goes further and is related to the arrival of man on the Moon.
The V-2 was designed by Wernher von Braun, a young German who dreamed of traveling to space. The engineer dedicated his first years to the study of engines with liquid propellants. After experimenting with various designs and working for the Nazis for more than a decade, von Braun and his engineers surrendered to the Americans.
Wernher von Braun, designer of the V-2, is linchpin of NASA’s space program. The German was the architect of the Saturn V, the rocket that took Apollo 11 to the Moon in 1969.
The Saturn V was derived from V-2 #13, the missile created to punish London and later launched from New Mexico to capture the first photograph from space.