It is often said that the first full image of the ‘blue planet’, taken by the Apollo 17 space mission in December 1972, revealed Earth to be precious, fragile and protected only by a wafer-thin atmospheric layer, and reinforced the imperative for better stewardship of our ‘only home’. Against these numinous readings, the NASA photograph also entrenched the apprehension of the Earth as total object and reinforced the instrumentalist conception of the Earth, that is, as an object to be ...
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