“There was nothing in the plan for an Earthrise photo. Indeed, we didn’t even see an actual Earthrise until, on our third orbit, we changed the spacecraft’s orientation to heads up and looking forward. As we came round the back side of the moon, where I had been taking pictures of craters near our orbital track, I looked up and saw the startlingly beautiful sight of our home planet ‘rising’ up above the stark and battered lunar horizon. It was the only color against the deep blackness of space. In short, it was beautiful, and clearly delicate.”

—William Anders (Jacobs, pg