Letter: A Final Image of Earth

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"Exiting the Solar System and Fulfilling a Dream" (front page, Sept. 13) noted Voyager 1's legacy of having "pumped out never-before-seen images of Jupiter and Saturn" in 1979 and 1980, but added that it hadn't returned any new pictures since 1990 "because there was no longer much to see." The time has now come for the magnificent little spacecraft to turn its cameras back toward the Sun and Earth for one final image of the world it has left behind.

Throughout its history, the space program has provided us with enduring images such as Apollo 8's 1968 photo "Earthrise," captured while in orbit around the Moon; Neil Armstrong's first footprint on the Moon a year later; and Voyager 1's 1990 "family portrait" mosaic of our solar system, in which Earth appears as a lonely "Pale Blue Dot," as the photograph is called.

An image of Earth and our entire solar system, as seen for the first time from beyond the heliosphere, would be another transcendent, iconic image, taken from a perspective that we may not have again in our lifetime.

STEPHEN A. SILVER
San Francisco, Sept. 13, 2013

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