NASA will be releasing images of Earth taken by two spacecrafts on July 19 from nearly 900 million miles away this week.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft took the color images of Earth and the moon 898 million miles away, but the main reason the photos were being taken was to study Saturn's rings to try determining when the sun will be backlighting the planet.
MESSENGER, the first probe to orbit Mercury according to NASA, took the black-and-white images from 61 million miles away as part of a search for natural satellites of the planet.
"We can't see individual continents or people in this portrait of Earth, but this pale blue dot is a succinct summary of who we were on July 19," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a press statement. "Cassini's picture reminds us how tiny our home planet is in the vastness of space, and also testifies to the ingenuity of the citizens of this tiny planet to send a robotic spacecraft so far away from home to study Saturn and take a look-back photo of Earth."
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 was only possible because Cassini was in Saturn's shadow according to NASA.
Over 20,000 people from all-around the world waved at the exact same time the photos were being taken from space.
"It thrills me to no end that people all over the world took a break from their normal activities to go outside and celebrate the interplanetary salute between robot and maker that these images represent," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute in a press statement. "The whole event underscores for me our 'coming of age' as planetary explorers."
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.
Scientists will now compare the new photo with the one taken in 2006 to compare how Saturn's rings have changed according to the L.A. Times.
"That images of our planet have been acquired on a single day from two distant solar system outposts reminds us of this nation's stunning technical accomplishments in planetary exploration," said MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in a press statement. "And because Mercury and Saturn are such different outcomes of planetary formation and evolution, these two images also highlight what is special about Earth. There's no place like home."
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