The tripping image of deep space shows the earth and the moon 180 million kilometers away

The Psyche spacecraft is on a six -year trip to reach an asteroid rich in metal with the same name. Well in her trip, the probe looked back at her native planet and captured a rare view of the earth, accompanied by her moon, like a simple specklier engulfed by the dark emptiness of space.

The NASA psyche mission was launched on October 13, 2023 and is responsible for exploring a distant target in the main asteroid belt which would be the exposed nucleus of a protoplanet. Before reaching its destination, the imaging team behind the mission tests the capacity of the spaceship to capture objects that shine by the light reflected by the sun. The target objects of these tests are terribly familiar – our own planet and moon – but they were taken from a rather unknown point of view.

In July, scientists from the imaging team took several photos of the Earth and the long exposure moon. The pair is seen in the middle of a dark background strewn with several stars in the ram constellation. The earth appears as a brilliant point, with the moon seated just above. The image was taken at around 180 million kilometers (290 kilometers) and offers a rare look at our planet seen from deep space.

The photo reminds me of the famous pale blue dowry, an image of the earth captured by the spacecraft travel 1 in 1990. This image was taken at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers), with the earth appearing as a simple stain in the cosmic background.

Although it has not been captured at the same distance, the recent psyche image is a similar reminder of the place and size of the earth in the solar system. The spaceship is equipped with a pair of cameras, designed to collect images in light wavelengths which are both visible and invisible to the human eye, to help determine the composition of the asteroid rich in metal.

The psyche must travel a total of around 2.2 billion miles to reach the main asteroid belt and enter the asteroid orbit of the psyche at the end of July 2029. The asteroid of 173 miles (280 kilometers) orbit the sun in the outer part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe that space rock could be an exposed nucleus of a planet, or an early planetary construction element, which was stripped of its external layer during the early formation of the solar system.