EXPLORING COPERNICUS

A picnic on the Moon: imagination meets reality.

Chesley Bonestell had been painting extraterrestrial landscapes for nearly two decades before the first such images were photographed. This image, however, was based on an actual photograph. In the summer of 1966, the Lunar Orbiter 1 became the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon. Its mission was to photograph potential landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. A few month later, Lunar Orbiter II took the photograph on which this painting is based. It was the first photographic true landscape of the Moon (as opposed to strictly overhead views).

Copernicus is a relatively young and bright crater and is easily visible from Earth. To see its topography from an oblique angle was astounding: the rim of the great crater Copernicus, the gentle hills surrounding it, and with the sharp, low peaks of the crater's ejecta in the middle. The press called the Lunar Orbiter II image, "the picture of the century" and compared it to scenes of the American West. Instead of cowboys on the ridge, in Bonestell's imagining, four astronauts are seen overlooking the heart of the crater.

This picture was published in the 20th Anniversary issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Melvin H. Schuetz described a scene of Soviet disappointment at coming in second to explore Copernicus: "Russian cosmonauts have landed on the Moon, but find that the Americans have been there first, and that one of them has carved his name on a rock. The name the Russians discover is—'Chesley Bonestell.'"