"WE'RE not the first to discover this, but we'd like to confirm, from the crew of Apollo 17, that the world is round," said astronaut Eugene Cernan during the 1972 mission when the first clear image of the whole illuminated Earth was taken.
The picture, dubbed the "blue marble" by NASA astronauts, has likely "been seen by more human beings than any other image in the world", says Mike Gentry, a photo archivist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "It was a symbol of hope for the future, unity and of a healthy planet."
Now geographers and environmentalists are hoping that a new set of images made freely available by the search engines Google and MSN Search will have a similar effect.
The release of Google Earth, a collection of bird's-eye photographs covering every inch of the planet, is likely to open up new advertising opportunities for ...
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