NASA Interplanetary Probes to Take Pictures of Earth from Space

[Rick]

NASA Interplanetary Probes to Take Pictures of Earth from Space

Two NASA spacecraft, one studying the Saturn system, the other observing Mercury, are maneuvering into place to take pictures of Earth on July 19 and 20.

The image taken from the Saturn system by NASA's Cassini spacecraft will occur between 5:27 and 5:42 p.m. EDT (2:27 and 2:42 PDT or 21:27 and 21:47 UTC) Friday, July 19. Cassini will be nearly 900 million miles away from Earth.

Inspired in part by the Cassini team's plans to obtain a picture of Earth, scientists reexamined the planned observations of NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury. They realized Earth is coincidentally expected to appear in some images taken in a search for natural satellites around Mercury on July 19 and 20. Those images will be taken at 7:49 a.m., 8:38 a.m. and 9:41 a.m. (11:49, 12:38 and 13:41 UTC) on both days.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/july/nasa-interplanetary-probes-to-take-pictures-of-earth-from-space/

[Rick]

NASA Releases Images of Earth by Distant Spacecraft

Color and black-and-white images of Earth taken by two NASA interplanetary spacecraft on July 19 show our planet and its moon as bright beacons from millions of miles away in space.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the color images of Earth and the moon from its perch in the Saturn system nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) away. MESSENGER, the first probe to orbit Mercury, took a black-and-white image from a distance of 61 million miles (98 million kilometers) as part of a campaign to search for natural satellites of the planet.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-229