On September 5, 1977 the Voyager 1 space probe was launched by NASA to study the outer solar system. For over 36 years it made it's way to the outer edge of our solar system and beyond. Last September at a distance from earth of 18 billion kilometres, it became the first man made object to cross the heliopause and pass into interstellar space!

On Feb. 14 1990 Voyager was approaching the outer limits of the planetary orbits. It was at this point 6.4 billion kilometres from earth. The researchers at JPL under the direction of astronomer Carl Sagan decided to remotely turn Voyager around and attempt to capture a photograph of Earth. He pointed out that this picture would not be mainly scientific, as the Earth would appear too small for the Voyager's cameras to make out any detail, but such a picture might be useful as a perspective on our place in the cosmos.

Voyager successfully completed it's task and sent back the photo now known as "THE PALE BLUE DOT"

In his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Carl related his thoughts on a deeper meaning of the photograph.
In the years since Carl Sagan's death, his words of warning and hope have become almost legendary.
There is something about Carl Sagan's famous "Pale Blue Dot" passage that is, to me at least, perfect.

Here is the now famous photograph followed by Carl's humbling and haunting words:

The Pale Blue Dot

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here.
That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbour 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 we've ever known.

Carl Sagan

Click here to watch a Pale Blue Dot video featuring Carl Sagan