Jul 19, 2013 03:16 PM EDT
Cassini Saturn Photo: Spacecraft Set to Take Earth’s Picture From 900 Million Miles Away

NASA's Cassini spacecraft is scheduled to take an historic interplanetary photo from 898 million miles away this week according to CBS News.

From 5:27 through 5:42 p.m., NASA will aim the Cassini spacecraft's highest-resolution camera toward Earth. Cassini was launched back in 1997 from Cape Canaveral to explore Saturn.

Earth will appear as a small, blue dot between the rings of Saturn, so don't expect to see yourself in the photo according to NASA.

Click here for an update on when the photos should be released.

"While Earth will be only about a pixel in size from Cassini's vantage point, the team is looking forward to giving the world a chance to see what their home looks like from Saturn," Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in a press statement.

The scientific plan to study Saturn's rings is to try determining when the sun will be backlighting the planet. Planet earth being in the mosaic is just a coincidence according to USA Today.

Taking pictures of Earth from the outer solar system is a difficult challenge since the sun can blind certain spacecraft cameras.

The chance to take a photo this week is only possible because Cassini will be in Saturn's shadow according to NASA.

Only two other photos similar to the one being taken today exists: one from 1990 called "Pale Blue Dot" taken from Voyager 1, which was 4 billion miles away, and another that Cassini took in 2006 from 926 million miles away.

"I just thought it would be a fantastic moment, a fantastic opportunity, if we could do it again, do it right, make sure the pictures are the correct camera settings, correct filters, all that stuff, do it right and let everybody know in advance so this could become a kind of interplanetary salute between robot and maker," said Carolyn Porco, the leader of the Cassini imaging team at the Space Science Institute in Colorado, to CBS News.

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