This beautiful piece starts out with a picture of Earth taken by Voyager 1 from a record distance of 4 billion miles away. It took Voyager 1 twelve years to travel to the edge of our solar system. NASA commanded it to turn around and take a picture of us. Friday was the 37th anniversary of Voyagers launch in 1977 and the spacecraft still receives routine commands from NASA and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. It is the first probe to leave the solar system and is the farthest man-made object from Earth The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home weve ever known.”
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 11:40:59 +0000
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