'Pale blue dot': Spot Earth if you can in this iconic pic taken by NASA's Cassini probe

NASA’s Cassini mission was one of its most ambitious ones, wherein it sent a spacecraft past the biggest planet of our solar system, Jupiter, all the way to Saturn. During 13 long years of its operation, the Cassini mission gathered loads of data and pictures were a valuable part of it. NASA has shared one such picture, which went viral soon after it was released in public. 

The image shared above was taken on 27 February 2013 by the Cassini spacecraft and provides a wide-angle view of Saturn's magnificent rings in great detail. However, another intriguing part of the image is the pale blue dot that is shining in the background while suspended in the cosmic dark.

Above the white band of light in the lower part of the image is our planet Earth, which looks nothing more than a shining dot in the vast arena of the universe. According to NASA, the Cassini spacecraft was about 1.4 billion kilometres (898 million miles) from Earth when it took the photograph. 

The Cassini mission

Launched on 15 October 1997, the Cassini mission was one of the most ambitious efforts in planetary space exploration, says NASA. The mission was launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and arrived at Saturn after an almost seven-year-long journey in 2004. NASA had collaborated with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) to send a sophisticated robotic spacecraft for a detailed study of the Saturnian system. 

The Cassini spacecraft lasted for a total of 13 years before it made a plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn on September 15, 2017. During the spacecraft's active years, its life was extended twice, first for two years and then for seven more and it was the second extension that allowed engineers to conduct dozens of flybys of Saturn's icy moons.

Following its demise, Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker had said in a mission report, "Cassini may be gone, but its scientific bounty will keep us occupied for many years. We've only scratched the surface of what we can learn from the mountain of data it has sent back over its lifetime". 

(Image: @NASA/Twitter)