50 Years On, This Iconic Photo Of Earth From The Moon Shows We Have Only One Planet To Live On

Taken on Dec 24, 1968, this photo from the Moon is one of the most iconic in the history of space travel.

Years before Armstrong walked on the Moon, this was taken from onboard the Apollo 8 orbiting lunar satellite. And now, 50 years later, it's engraved in history.

The photo was taken by astronaut William Anders, from the window of the Apollo 8 spacecraft. And to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that mission, the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) have approved the crater being officially named Anders' Earthrise. Seeing as the Moon always has the same face to Earth, the crater will always have that majestic view.

But as wondrous as that image is, it holds a deep melancholy for us in the 21st century. There in the distance is our little blue marble in all it's glory 50 years ago. And closer in the foreground is the barren waste of the Moon. Something that, if we're not careful of, can be our planet's future too.

Indeed, the photo of Anders' Earthrise is credited with originally starting the environmental movement back in the 70s. Even if that's a bit of an exaggeration, there's no doubt that the image was heavily used to raise awareness for the cause, and provide strong imagery for a movement that was constantly brushed off as frivolous.

When you look at that photo with our entire planet fitting into one part of the frame, and the vast emptiness of space behind it, you can't possibly imagine yourself as the centre of the Universe anymore. Earth is just one tiny sector of the great unknown. And if we keep destroying its environment with our greed, it will destroy us in return, and the rest of the universe will keep moving on without missing a beat.

Images of Earth from space today look just as magnificent as this one, if more detailed. However, the planet itself is radically different. Advances in science, medicine, and technology have greatly improved average living standards and life expectancy. But Earth can't keep up with all our polluting and exhaustive mining.

There are an estimated 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean, and the number is only growing. That plastic is now entering our own food as well. We've destroyed the ozone layer and it may not be healing at all. Pollution is so bad we're a hair's breadth away from killing ourselves with it. We've killed off 60 percent of the world's wildlife in just the last 40 years, and it may take another 7 million years for the ecosystem to catch up again.

We have only about 10 years to fix our mistakes, and we're nowhere close to doing what needs to be done. Even kids lambasting us for our hesitance isn't effective anymore. So take a look again at Earthrise, and remember what it once stood for. We have one planet to live on. SO it's probably not wise to chop off the branch we're hanging onto.