A Small Speck of Dust

Moving at a speed of 10.5 miles per second, the equivalent of more than 38,000 miles per hour, Voyager 1, launched on September 5, 1977, is now the most distant man-made object from Earth, having traveled more than 10.8 billion miles. Last December, after a 33-year journey and after sending thousands of spectacular images of the various planets and moons in our solar system, Voyager 1 has already reached the outer limits of our solar system.

One of the most famous images ever snapped by Voyager 1, taken on June 6, 1990, was dubbed the "Pale Blue Dot," depicting Earth on a scale never before seen.

 Of the "Pale Blue Dot," astronomer Carl Sagan said:

That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

This sure makes us feel kinda small... living on a small speck of duct in a seemingly vast and infinite creation that is the universe.

Reference: NASA