On February 14, 1990, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft showed where is everything we’ve ever known and heard of. shining in the darkness of space”Light blue dot”, that is, our Earth posed in front of the vehicle 6 billion kilometers away.

With the calendars now showing 33 years ahead, Pale Blue Dot got a sibling. The European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Mars Express spacecraft 20 years ago. He viewed the Earth and the Moon together from a distance of millions of miles. As well as moving.

Here’s the view of the ending trio from millions of years away:

The brightest round in the image you see above is our Earth. The faint gray dot we see spinning next to it is the moon. Everything you experience, hear, see and feel is in one of these fuzzy places – even partially above both.

The point where we see this landscape is actually at the level of nothing in space – about 300 million kilometers away, near Mars. It’s not even close to the distance from which the Pale Blue Dot was filmed.

This short GIF, May 15, May 21, May 27 and June 2, 2023 It consists of a combination of images created in the past.

The image also has significance for ESA. Mars Express was the spacecraft used in ESA’s first planetary mission. The desk too 20th launch anniversary He wanted to remember Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot descriptions:

Light blue dot

“We were able to take this picture from the depths of space. If you look closely at this picture, you see a dot there. Look at that dot again. This place is our home. It is us. Everyone you love and knows, of which you have heard, living or dead, is in it.

The sum of all our joys and sorrows, thousands of conflicting religions, ideologies and economic teachings; Every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward, every founder and destroyer of civilization, every king and farmer, every couple in love, every mother and father, every hopeful child, every inventor, every explorer, every moralist, every degenerate every politician, every famous star, every “high leader”, every saint and sinner lived there; in that speck of dust that floats in a sunbeam.”