The first photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope are impressive. The South Rim Nebula, Stephen’s Quintet, or Carina Nebula are clearer and provide scientists with important information. James Webb is the culmination of decades of effort and passion to discover what lies beyond our planet. A need that first materialized with the first photograph taken from space in 1946.
Before the creation of NASA or the start of the space race, scientists and US Army soldiers fired a rocket from the New Mexico desert to take the first photograph of the Earth. Americans used V-2 rocket confiscated in Nazi Germany and integrated a 35mm movie camera developed by Clyde Holliday, an engineer at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
The rocket helped position the camera at an altitude of 105 kilometers, a distance barely more than the Karman line, which marks the boundary between the atmosphere and outer space. The camera released the shutter and took 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 by spaceship.
35mm camera as an alternative to James Webb in 1946.
In accordance with Magazine “Air and Space”, the camera took a new frame every one and a half seconds. Both the rocket and the camera crashed on impact with the surface of our planet. Fred Rulli, a 19-year-old soldier, removed the cassette with the surviving tape thanks to the protective cover.
When Rulli brought the material to the scientists, they went crazy. “They were excited and jumping around like kids,” he said in an interview. After that, the pictures were projected onto a screen and everyone went crazy. It was first image of the earth from space. Previous attempts have barely reached 14 miles with the Explorer II, a high-altitude manned balloon.
Holliday and other scientists at Johns Hopkins analyzed the contents of the cassette and stitch multiple frames together to create a panoramic photo. The final result covers a distance of 4345 kilometers and shows part of Mexico, the Gulf of California and several landmarks in the United States. The total area captured by the camera exceeds 2 million square kilometers.
Photo taken with a Nazi rocket
The first photograph from space was captured 26 July 1948 by V-2 rocket. After the end of World War II, the US military confiscated Nazi Germany’s secret projects, including its missile program. V-2, abbreviation Wergeltungswaffe 2 (Weapon of Vengeance 2) was first long-range ballistic missile designed to attack allied cities.
Before taking Holliday’s camera into space, V-2 caused the death of thousands of people in Antwerp and London. Although it was one of the most important achievements of the war, the contribution of this rocket goes further and is associated with the arrival of a man on the moon.
The V-2 was designed by Wernher von Braun, a young German who dreamed of flying into space. The engineer devoted the first years of his life to the study of liquid fuel engines. 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, V-2 designer, the core of the NASA 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 based on the #13 V-2 rocket built to punish London and then launched from New Mexico to take the first photograph from space.
Source: Hiper Textual
