“After I got in orbit we looked out and saw the Nile Delta come up for the first time; I took a picture of the Delta on three or four passes. You only get one pass a day where you could get this angle of the delta from well to the west where you can look out and see Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon -even up to Saudi Arabia. That’s got to be my favourite Earth photo,” said James McDivitt (Schick and Van Haaften, p. 37).

“For centuries man has looked on the Nile Valley as one of the cradles of civilization,” astronaut Frank Borman noted. “Generations have explored, excavated, and interpreted the significance of the Nile and its delta, but it was not until 1965 that the world received its first panoramic view of this sprawling spectacle on the northern coast of Africa. This picture revealed, for the first time as an entity, the 500 000-square-mile delta with its collar of wind-whipped rock and desert. This photograph became an important data point in man’s quest to understand his environment.” (Cortright, p. 144).