The Juno spacecraft sent out by NASA has recently beamed back stunning video footage of our home planet and its moon before proceeding on its long journey to Jupiter last October.
Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton says, "If Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise said, 'Take us home, Scotty,' this is what the crew would see."
"In the movie, you ride aboard Juno as it approaches Earth and then soars off into the blackness of space. No previous view of our world has ever captured the heavenly waltz of Earth and moon." Bolton adds.
The Juno spacecraft was launched Aug. 5, 2011 from NASA's Florida-based Kennedy Space Center on a mission to Jupiter. The spacecraft took the video on Oct. 9, 2013 on a maneuver that took it past Earth. The maneuver added an 8,800 mph speed boost to the spacecraft to aid it on its way to Jupiter. Juno is expected to reach its destination by July 4, 2016. The video footage the craft sent back would be exactly what a crew of a starship would see if they were heading back home from a deep space mission.
The Juno spacecraft is equipped with a set of sophisticated cameras mounted on the craft's solar array. While the cameras were installed as part of the craft's MAG or Magnetic Field Investigation system, they were pointed towards the Earth to produce the stunning footage. The video was taken approximately 600,000 miles from our planet. To put things in perspective, this is three times the distance from the Earth to the moon.
While taking a video might seem like a simple affair, this is actually a pretty difficult maneuver in space. The craft was rotating at a rate of 2 revolutions per minute, which would have produced a dizzying, rotating video that would be difficult to watch. This means that the onboard cameras had to take a single frame each time the spacecraft was at the right angle to produce a stable video. This is a feat of timing and engineering and the results were beamed back to the Earth and processed at NASA.
