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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rFDjAfwmWKM
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