[bài nghe]One world (st)

The Apollo program was a series of space flights with the goal of landing a man on the moon. This was finally accomplished in 1969 during the Apollo 11 mission when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon’s surface. As he did so, he famously said, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” While the Apollo 11 space mission is the most well known, it was the Apollo 17 mission that brought home the most reproduced photograph of all time.

The crew of the Apollo 17 took the first and only full photograph of the earth taken by a human. The photo, named the Blue Marble, shows our earth as a perfect blue circle surrounded by the blackness of space. Astronauts have described the experience of seeing the Earth from space as breathtaking and awesome. The Blue Marble photo gave regular people a taste of that. With one photograph, humanity could see itself with fresh eyes. The view of the earth from space was one of unity, free from national boundaries. Suddenly we could see ourselves as one people, with one home. Released during the environmental movements of the 70’s it also became a symbol of how fragile our home is and how much we need to protect it.

Just like the Blue Marble has become a symbol of unity, a newly created Earth flag shines a light on the interconnection of life on earth. Swedish designer Oskar Pernefeldt carefully thought about how to represent the web of life that is earth.

“Centered in the flag, seven rings form a flower – a symbol of the life on Earth. The rings are linked to each other, which represents how everything on our planet, directly or indirectly, is linked. The blue field represents water which is essential for life – also as the oceans cover most of our planet’s surface. The flower’s outer rings form a circle which could be seen as a symbol of planet Earth and the blue surface could represent the universe.”



The Apollo space missions left behind 6 American Flags standing on the moon. To this day, 5 of them remain standing, but you wouldn’t recognize them. The red white and blue stars and stripes have all completely faded away leaving behind blank white flags. As we start to turn our eyes towards Mars and beyond, maybe it’s time to start planting Planet Earth flags instead.