Feb 12, 2018
A few blurry photographs broke a long-standing NASA record — by some 40 million miles.
Images released by NASA on Thursday were taken by equipment operating further away from earth than any other cameras in history, according to the agency. The first of these photos, taken by equipment aboard the New Horizons spacecraft in December, was captured some 3.79 billion miles away from our planet. Snaps taken just two hours later were even further away, NASA says.
The photos, which depict a cluster of stars called Wishing Well, were taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on Dec. 5. They surpassed a photo of earth taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 vessel when it was 3.75 billion miles away from the planet, which held the record for longest-range image for 27 years, according to NASA.
On Dec. 9, New Horizons also set the record for the most distant course-correction maneuver ever, according to NASA. It will also land in the history books for charting the furthest planetary encounter in history, a full billion miles beyond Pluto.
