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Earth Departure Movie
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Earth Departure Movie
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The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of
Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005.
Several hundred images, taken with the wide-angle camera in MESSENGER's
Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), were sequenced into a movie
documenting the view from MESSENGER as it departed Earth.
Comprising 358 frames taken over 24 hours, the movie follows Earth through
one complete rotation. The spacecraft was 40,761 miles (65,598 kilometers)
above South America when the camera started rolling on Aug. 2. It was
270,847 miles (435,885 kilometers) away from Earth—farther than the
Moon's orbit—when it snapped the last image on Aug. 3.
These images are from MESSENGER, a NASA Discovery mission to conduct the
first orbital study of the innermost planet, Mercury. For information
regarding the use of images, see the MESSENGER image use policy.
