Cape Kennedy, Earth's first spaceport, from space; "SO VAST; SO BEAUTIFUL; SO OVERPOWERING", 21-29 August 1965

Vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based paper, printed 1965, numbered "NASA S-65-45599" (NASA MSC) in red in top margin, with "A KODAK PAPER" watermark on verso, 20,3 x 25,4 cm

[LIFE caption for the photograph]
CAPE KENNEDY
The Gemini 5 view of the world included this panorama of its embarkation point. As the spaceship moved east over the Atlantic, the Astronauts could see the row of launching pads lining the beach where the cape just cast into the ocean. Photographing the Earth was one mission of the flight. Alternating, the pilots did it with a hand-held Hasselblad camera.

Last week NASA released the most remarkable photographs of the Earth ever recorded, some taken from as high as 180 miles in Gemini V. To Conrad the spectacle that unfolded "was so vast, so beautiful and so overpowering that somehow man and all his problems seemed insignificant." He and Cooper documented their journey so precisely that earthbound man can take an unprecedented armchair tour-through their photographs-of the world he inhabits.

Literature:
LIFE, Most remarkable views of Earth ever recorded, 24 September 1965, pp. 30-31.