This image records the view from a rocket launched at White Sands Missile Range in 1946. An automatic camera in the nose cone exposed one frame of film every one and a half seconds, producing the clearest images up to that time of the curvature of the earth. A writer for National Geographic saw in the sequence “how Earth would look to visitors from another planet coming in on a space-ship.” The unseen back of this print hints at another journey: the migration of “outer space” from the realm of military research into that of science fiction. The print, formerly owned by a Hollywood film studio, is inscribed “Riders to the Stars”—a 1954 feature film whose heroes fly into orbit to battle a meteor swarm.
Earth from the Thermosphere, made by a camera attached to a V-2 Rocket, 1946. Gelatin silver print, 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches. Purchased on funds given by the Margaret T. Morris Foundation and by Richard and Ronay Menschel, with special assistance by Daniel Blau, 2020.83