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The farthest images of the earth, the record is 6 billion km away

Our beloved Earth has magical pictures from the farthest corners of the planet . Would you like to see them?

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is one of the most distant man-made objects ever, and it has just taken its most distant image yet. The image of an icy rock in the Kuiper Belt has been coloured to increase contrast.

New Horizons is still on an active mission to visit the Kuiper Belt. During its journey to the farthest reaches of the solar system, the spacecraft will often go into hibernation mode to conserve energy. Mission controllers will occasionally turn on their cameras to take a few calibration shots and transmit them back to Earth.

After reaching Pluto, the spacecraft headed into the Kuiper Belt on its way to its next target, a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) called 2014 MU69. It is currently about 41 times farther from Earth than the Earth is from the Sun. Only four spacecraft have ever been this far: Voyager 1 and 2, and Pioneer 10 and 11.

But New Horizons is the first spacecraft to send back a picture from such a great distance. Its four predecessors failed to send back images because their cameras turned off before reaching such a distant point.

Photos of Earth taken from space stations or planets millions or billions of kilometers away show us very different and emotional images.

The farthest images of the earth, the record is 6 billion km away
"Pale Blue Dot" is a photograph of Earth taken on February 14, 1990, from a distance of 6.06 billion km by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft at the edge of the Solar System. The photo shows the smallness of Earth in the vast universe. Photo: NASA.
The farthest images of the earth, the record is 6 billion km away
The first image of Earth from space was taken by a camera attached to a V-2 rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico, USA on October 24, 1946. The camera was protected from air friction by being mounted in a steel box. The rocket launched into the sky at a maximum altitude of 105 km, at a speed of 150 m/s. Photo: Applied Physics Laboratory.
The farthest images of the earth, the record is 6 billion km away
This image of the Earth rising above the Moon's horizon was transmitted by the US Lunar Orbiter I space shuttle on August 23, 1966. Photo: NASA.
The farthest images of the earth, the record is 6 billion km away
The famous photo "Earthrise", taken when the first astronauts orbited the Moon on the Apollo 8 spacecraft on December 24, 1968. This is also one of the most copied space photos of all time. Photo: NASA.
The farthest images of the earth, the record is 6 billion km away
This image of the Moon orbiting the Earth at a distance of 63.6 million km in space was taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft during its mission to sample the asteroid Bennu in January 2018. The photo was taken when the spacecraft was traveling at a speed of 30,600 km/h. In the image, Earth is the large bright spot and the Moon is the smaller bright spot to the right, about 400,000 km apart. Photo: NASA.
The farthest images of the earth, the record is 6 billion km away
This photo of Earth was taken during NASA's Spirit rover's exploration of the surface of Mars in 2004. In the photo, Earth is a very faint dot. This is the first photo of Earth taken from a planet other than the Moon. Photo: NASA.
The farthest images of the earth, the record is 6 billion km away
In 2013, the Cassini spacecraft continued to take pictures of Earth at a distance of 1.4 billion km, while flying close to Saturn. In the picture, Earth looks like a bright spot. Photo: NASA.
The farthest images of the earth, the record is 6 billion km away
In 2013, a camera mounted on the outside of the spacecraft captured the entire scene of Juno flying past the Earth and the Moon at a distance of more than 965,000 km. At that time, the spacecraft passed by the Earth to perform the “gravity assist” technique, taking advantage of gravity to increase the spacecraft’s speed. Photo: NASA.

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