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The first Applications Technology Satellite (ATS I) transmitted the first detailed B&W whole Earth photographs and relayed from 22,300 miles images at various hours showing the “phases of the Earth”, as the Planet was waxing and waning.

“The photos show the changing cloud pattern over the eastern Pacific Ocean and the North, Central and South American continent for an 18-hour period beginning about 6:30 A.M. EST. These pictures were recorded at the ATS ground station in Rosman, N.C. The sequence reads from right to left, beginning at the upper right side of the print” (NASA caption).

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The first Applications Technology Satellite (ATS I) was launched in 1966 with a revolutionary B&W camera on board, the “spin scan cloud camera” invented by Dr. Verner Suomi and Professor Robert Parent of the University of Wisconsin. Designed to take high resolution weather photographs through a spinning geostationary satellite orbiting as fast as the Earth was spinning, and therefore apparently stationary, it revealed for the first time detailed B&W photographs of the whole Planet Earth. The camera was pronounced “a roaring success, with performance beyond my wildest dreams” by Dr. Suomi (Poole, p. 85).

[NASA caption] From 22,300 miles up, here is the way the cloud pattern over the earth looked like at 5:44 p.m. Dec 13. The photo was made by NASA’s ATS-I, a highly versatile satellite designed to advance the fields of spacecraft communications, meteorology and control technology. ATS-I also carried scientific experiments to measure the orbital
environment of the satellite.