Cassini Probe to Take Photo of Earth From Deep Space

June 18, 2013

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Jia-Rui C. Cook
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0850
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

RELEASE: 13-187

CASSINI PROBE TO TAKE PHOTO OF EARTH FROM DEEP SPACE

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft, now exploring Saturn, will
take a picture of our home planet from a distance of hundreds of
millions of miles on July 19. NASA is inviting the public to help
acknowledge the historic interplanetary portrait as it is being
taken.

Earth will appear as a small, pale blue dot between the rings of
Saturn in the image, which will be part of a mosaic, or multi-image
portrait, of the Saturn system Cassini is composing.

"While Earth will be only about a pixel in size from Cassini's vantage
point 898 million (1.44 billion kilometers) away, the team is looking
forward to giving the world a chance to see what their home looks
like from Saturn," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "We hope
you'll join us in waving at Saturn from Earth, so we can commemorate
this special opportunity."

Cassini will start obtaining the Earth part of the mosaic at 5:27 p.m.
EDT (2:27 p.m. PDT or 21:27 UTC) and end about 15 minutes later, all
while Saturn is eclipsing the sun from Cassini's point of view. The
spacecraft's unique vantage point in Saturn's shadow will provide a
special scientific opportunity to look at the planet's rings. At the
time of the photo, North America and part of the Atlantic Ocean will
be in sunlight.

Unlike two previous Cassini eclipse mosaics of the Saturn system in
2006, which captured Earth, and another in 2012, the July 19 image
will be the first to capture the Saturn system with Earth in natural
color, as human eyes would see it. It also will be the first to
capture Earth and its moon with Cassini's highest-resolution camera.
The probe's position will allow it to turn its cameras in the
direction of the sun, where Earth will be, without damaging the
spacecraft's sensitive detectors.

"Ever since we caught sight of the Earth among the rings of Saturn in
September 2006 in a mosaic that has become one of Cassini's most
beloved images, I have wanted to do it all over again, only better,"
said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science
Institute in Boulder, Colo. "This time, I wanted to turn the entire
event into an opportunity for everyone around the globe to savor the
uniqueness of our planet and the preciousness of the life on it."

Porco and her imaging team associates examined Cassini's planned
flight path for the remainder of its Saturn mission in search of a
time when Earth would not be obstructed by Saturn or its rings.
Working with other Cassini team members, they found the July 19
opportunity would permit the spacecraft to spend time in Saturn's
shadow to duplicate the views from earlier in the mission to collect
both visible and infrared imagery of the planet and its ring system.

"Looking back towards the sun through the rings highlights the tiniest
of ring particles, whose width is comparable to the thickness of hair
and which are difficult to see from ground-based telescopes," said
Matt Hedman, a Cassini science team member based at Cornell
University in Ithaca, N.Y., and a member of the rings working group.
"We're particularly interested in seeing the structures within
Saturn's dusty E ring, which is sculpted by the activity of the
geysers on the moon Enceladus, Saturn's magnetic field and even solar
radiation pressure."

This latest image will continue a NASA legacy of space-based images of
our fragile home, including the 1968 "Earthrise" image taken by the
Apollo 8 moon mission from about 240,000 miles (380,000 kilometers)
away and the 1990 "Pale Blue Dot" image taken by Voyager 1 from about
4 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) away.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington, and designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter
and its two onboard cameras. The imaging team consists of scientists
from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The
imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in
Boulder, Colo.

To learn more about the public outreach activities associated with the
taking of the image, visit:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/waveatsaturn

For more information about Cassini, visit

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini


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