PHOTO: Earth and the Moon captured in a single frame. High clouds near the day-night terminator glow red with sunrise. (Supplied: NOAA-NASA-GOES Project/ Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures) |
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx
spacecraft, which is currently on its way to grab a chunk of an asteroid, has
returned a stunning image of Earth and the Moon in the process. The spacecraft
snapped the image on October 2, 2017, just after it made a flyby of Earth,
although the image has only just been released by NASA.
At this time the Moon was almost
about 390,000 kilometers (240,000 miles) from Earth. OSIRIS-REx took this image
from a distance of more than 5 million kilometers (3 million miles) from Earth,
or more than 13 times the Earth-Moon distance. It was taken by combining three
images from different color wavelengths. The Moon was brightened to make it
more visible. This image as a whole is truly amazing.
OSIRIS-REx was making a flyby of Earth when it took the image. NASA/OSIRIS-REx team/University of Arizona |
The spacecraft was launched
on September 8, 2016, but in order to reach its target, it then orbited the Sun
for a year before flying past Earth to get a speed boost from our planet’s
gravity.
It made its closest approach
to our planet – an altitude of 17,000 kilometers (11,000 miles) – on September
22, 2017, and took this image 10 days later.
This will give it enough
speed to reach Bennu, with the spacecraft due to rendezvous with the asteroid
in August 2018 at a distance of about 320 million kilometers (200 million
miles) from Earth. In total, the spacecraft will travel 7.2 billion kilometers
(4.5 billion miles) to reach Bennu.
Once at the asteroid it will
use a robotic arm to collect a sample in July 2020. In March 2021, the spacecraft
will begin its journey back to Earth, and in September 2023 the sample will be
delivered in a capsule back to Earth – the biggest sample returned since the
Apollo missions. It’s hoped this sample could tell us more about the origins of
life on Earth.
That image above isn’t the
only time we’ve seen Earth and the Moon from space.
MESSENGER took this picture of our planet and Moon from the orbit of Mercury in 2011. NASA |
Quite a few other spacecraft
have captured similar views, showing the distance between our two bodies. In
1992, for example, the Galileo spacecraft captured an image of our two worlds
on its way to Jupiter. In 2011, the MESSENGER spacecraft took an image of Earth
and the Moon from Mercury. And also in 2011, the Juno spacecraft took a picture
of Earth and the Moon on its way to Jupiter.
Juno also snapped this image in 2011, showing Earth and the Moon. NASA |
Via IFLScience
At this time the Moon was almost about 390,000 kilometers (240,000 miles) from Earth. When I am at home I am almost about 5 miles from work.
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