The National Aeronautics and Space Administration recently announced that one of their probes have broken the record for pictures taken farthest away from Earth. This feat was achieved when the probe called New Horizons took photographs of objects in the Kuiper Belt, a cluster of icy objects located at the edge of the Solar System.
New Horizons first snapped photos of a star cluster on Dec. 5, 2017, with the subjects being 3.79 billion miles away from Earth. This in itself is a achievement, but the spacecraft broke its own record-breaking feat a mere two hours later, when the spacecraft took photos of said objects in the Kuiper Belt.
This achievement beat the previous record of Voyager 1. Space enthusiasts may remember this spacecraft as the spacecraft that took the picture of Earth now known as the "Pale Blue Dot." This photo of Earth was taken on Feb. 14, 1990, when Voyager 1 was 3.75 billion miles away from our home planet.
"Pale Blue Dot" long held the record for being the picture taken farthest from Earth.
However, Voyager 1's cameras were tuned off shortly after "Pale Blue Dot" was taken. This was because members of the mission team believed that the spacecraft will not have a chance to take pictures of any significance again, because its flight path was planned to pass between star systems. They decided to turn off the cameras to save power that can be used for other functions like data collection.
Meanwhile, New Horizons continues its journey to the edge of the solar system. As of right now it is headed for an icy rock called 2014 MU69, which is located just beyond Pluto. Experts suspect that 2014 MU69 is not just one object, but two objects that are located very close together. Should New Horizons get closer to the subject, it will be expected to take photos that will check the experts' suspicions.
