'Pale Blue Dot' images turn 25; where are the Voyager spacecraft now?

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Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot"

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Since Feb. 14, photographs of NASA’s iconic ‘Pale Blue Dot’ have been making the rounds on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The image was taken 25 years ago, Valentine’s Day, 1990 while NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft was exploring the outer planets of our solar system (and beyond) in 1977. The image provided a new perspective for skywatchers, where the planets Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Earth, or ‘the pale blue dot,” were captured.

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In the images that are circulating, all but three of the nine planets in our solar system are shown. The Mirror reported, Feb. 15, that “Mars was said to be too dark to see, Mercury was too close to the sun and Pluto was too dim.” The image was taken approximately 93 million miles away from Earth and was the final photograph that the craft had taken. According to NASA,“After Voyager 1 took its last image (the "Solar System Family Portrait" in 1990), the cameras were turned off to save power and memory for the instruments expected to detect the new charged particle environment of interstellar space.”

Though the “family photo” was incomplete, it “continues to inspire wonderment about the spot we call home,” Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist said in a statement from NASA. Further, Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2 continue to travel inside of interstellar space (a physical space that does not contain stars or solar systems).

In late summer 2012, Voyager 1 had become the first man-made craft to pass to the other side of the heliosphere, the “huge bubble of particles and magnetic fields surrounding the sun.” Now the craft, along with its twin, explores interstellar space, sending back information and carrying a time-capsule like golden record which contains “words, images, music and lots of science” in the case the craft find the eyes and ears of other intelligent life. According to the NYPost, this golden record is “essentially the world’s greatest mix tape.”

Both Voyager spacecraft are far away from the ‘pale blue dot,’ but neither of their journeys are even close to an end. According to the mission page at NASA, the “objective of the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM) is to extend the NASA exploration of the solar system beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets to the outer limits of the Sun's sphere of influence, and possibly beyond.”

To find out more and to keep up with the Voyager mission, NASA has an official site here that keeps track of current news and findings. The site also keeps track of things like how far the spacecraft are from the earth and the sun as well as learning tools and ways to stay connected.

*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com