Explanation:
What it would look like to leave planet Earth?
Such an event was
recorded
visually in great detail
by the MESSENGER spacecraft as it swung back past the Earth,
eight years ago, on its way in toward the
planet Mercury.
Earth can be seen rotating in
this time-lapse video, as it recedes into the distance.
The sunlit half of Earth is
so bright that background
stars are not visible.
The
robotic MESSENGER spacecraft is now in orbit around
Mercury and has recently concluded the first
complete map of the surface.
On occasion,
MESSENGER has continued to
peer back at its home world.
MESSENGER is one of the few things created on the
Earth that has left and will
never return -- at the end of its mission MESSENGER will be crashed into
Mercury's surface.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
