This is a photomosaic of the first natural color images of the Earth sucessfully taken from a high-altitude rocket. It image shows a large swathe of land to the south and east of the launch site and a tropical cyclone is visible over Del Rio, Texas. This image is also the first ever taken from a sufficient altitude to show the large scale structure of a storm and hints at the promise of meteorological satellites. The rocket was a US Navy sounding rocket launched at 1815 GMT on October 5, 1954 from White Sands, New Mexico and it was at an altitude of about 100 miles when this image was captured. There is a paper available describing this rocket launch and the associated imagery in the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/083/mwr-083-06-0119.pdf">Monthly Weather Review</a>.
Camera aboard a US Navy aerobee sounding rocket.
1954-10-05
Motion picture camera aboard a US Navy rocket. Image from the NOAA Photo library Image ID:<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/spac0032.htm">spac0032, NOAA In Space Collection</a>.