NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured an image of Earth from almost 1.5 billion kilometers in an “interplanetary salute between robot and maker.”
The craft’s wide-angle camera took the photo Friday while orbiting Mercury 1.44 billion kilometres away.
“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,” Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, said in a release Tuesday.
“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.”
This pale blue dot is a succinct summary of who we were on July 19
The image was captured Friday and took days to process.
Scientists say the snapshots of Earth are part of a bigger effort to study Saturn’s shimmering rings and search for moons around Mercury.
NASA had invited the public to look skyward and wave at Saturn and Mercury in what it billed as an interplanetary photo op.
“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, head of Cassini’s imaging team. “The whole event underscores for me our ‘coming of age’ as planetary explorers.”
File from the Associated Press