First Photograph of Earth from Space Captured by a V-2 Rocket

Following the war, the United States repurposed a German V-2 rocket, designated No. 13, for research at White Sands Missile Range. A 35 mm black-and-white DeVry film camera, prepared by engineer Clyde Holliday of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, was installed to capture frames roughly every 1.5 seconds. The rocket ascended to about 105 km, slightly exceeding the Kármán line, then fell back to Earth at roughly 150 m/s, shattering on impact while the film remained intact inside a steel housing.

After retrieval and development, scientists saw for the first time the planet’s curvature set against the void of space, with visible cloud formations over the southwestern U.S. Earlier high-altitude images had come from a 1935 balloon at 22 km, far below space. Subsequent V-2 flights between 1946 and 1950 yielded over a thousand similar photographs, paving the way for later satellite imaging.