That’s Here. That’s Home.
The pictures of Earth taken on July 19 by Cassini and MESSENGER were released by NASA, so now we have a few more images of our tiny and fragile world to add to Voyager 1’s Pale Blue Dot, taken in 1990, Cassini’s previous effort, from 2006, and the few taken over the years by our orbiters and rovers operating on Mars.
MESSENGER should have actually taken six pictures containing Earth and the Moon on July 19 and 20, but they should all be nearly identical to this first one that was released and, due to being black and white and overexposed, unlikely to be particularly inspiring. Cassini’s picture, on the other hand, is only the third ever taken of Earth from outside the inner solar system, while also being the clearest of the three and so far the only one that also depicts the Moon from such a distance. As the press release states, while this frame that contains Earth and the Moon was processed and published as soon as possible due to public interest, the challenges of assembling such a mosaic mean that it will be weeks before the full image of Saturn and its rings during what from Cassini’s viewpoint was a solar eclipse will be ready for release.
With the sad reminder that New Horizons, launched in 2006, is the only spacecraft sent beyond the orbit of Saturn since the Voyagers and that, since both Cassini and Juno are scheduled to end their missions in 2017 and nothing else with a destination beyond Mars is scheduled to launch by then, these three will be our only active spacecraft beyond the inner solar system after that date, all I can do now is once again add links to Carl Sagan‘s Pale Blue Dot speech and, though it refers to images taken from the Moon, Neil deGrasse Tyson‘s We Stopped Dreaming (Episode 2).
Actually, while I’m at it, I’ll also add these few thoughts shared by Kepler mission scientist Natalie Batalha before Cassini took this latest picture, most notably the last part: “Here we are, the human family, attempting to survive. May we succeed. May we figure out how to love one another fully and how to live in harmony with the Universe and continue to evolve into perpetuity.” It struck me as well said, though somewhat too anthropocentric for my liking. I’d personally be quite happy if we’d figure out how to live in harmony with the other species we share this tiny dot with first, recognizing that it’s our responsibility as the ones most capable of shaping the future of this little sphere to help them survive and evolve as well.
