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PHOTO OF THE DAY... Check out this cool shot of Earth and the Moon that was taken by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft on May 6 of this year. Even though MESSENGER was near the orbit of Venus when it took this image, it’s awesome to see that the probe was able to discern our home world and its satellite from each other at a distance of 114 million miles (183 million kilometers) away. This pic is just as cool as this photo of asteroid Lutetia with Saturn in the background that was taken by Europe’s comet-bound Rosetta spacecraft last month. MESSENGER’s destination is Mercury...where it will arrive (after flying past the planet for 'gravity assists' three times since 2008) on March 18, 2011. Stay tuned.


NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington