Always returning

The film photographs from the Gemini and Mercury missions have been remastered:

Mercury was more basic cameras. So on the very first missions, NASA didn't want the astronaut to take a camera on board. The capsules were tiny. They were very busy. They're very short missions, obviously very groundbreaking missions. So, the first couple of missions, there was a camera out of the porthole window, just taking photographs automatically. But it was John Glenn on his mission (Mercury-Atlas 6) who said, "No, I want to take a camera. People want to know what it's going to be like to be an astronaut. They're going to want to look at Earth through the window. I'm seeing things no humans ever seen before." So he literally saw a $40 camera in a drugstore on his way after a haircut at Cocoa Beach. He thought, "That's perfect." And he bought it himself, and then NASA adapted it. They put a pistol grip on to help him to use it. And with it, he took the first still photographs of Earth from space.