NASA Releases Farthest Photos Ever Taken Nearly 4 Billion Miles Away From Earth

This December 2017 false-color image made available by NASA in February 2018 shows KBO (Kuiper Belt object) 2012 HZ84. This image is, for now, one of the farthest pictures from Earth ever captured by a spacecraft.

(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute via AP)

New Horizons recorded a picture of a star cluster taken from nearly 4 billion miles away, breaking the previous record.
The photo surpassed the "Pale Blue Dot" images of Earth taken by Voyager 1 back in 1990.
Launched in 2006, New Horizons is headed toward 2014 MU69, an icy world 1 billion miles beyond Pluto.

Remember that NASA spacecraft that gave us a remarkable view of Pluto? Well, New Horizons has outdone itself again, setting a record for the farthest photos ever taken from Earth.

At a distance of 3.79 billion miles from Earth, New Horizons recorded a picture of a star cluster this past December. The cluster photo surpassed the "Pale Blue Dot" images of Earth that NASA's Voyager 1 took back in 1990.

The images for “Pale Blue Dot” — part of a composite — were taken 3.75 billion miles (6.06 billion kilometers) away.

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New Horizons took more photos as it sped deeper into the cosmos in December. These pictures show two objects in the Kuiper Belt, the so-called twilight zone on the fringes of our solar system.

NASA released the images this week.

New Horizons flew past Pluto in 2015. It’s headed toward an even closer encounter with another icy world, 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto, on Jan. 1, 2019. The targeted object is known as 2014 MU69; the spacecraft will pass within 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers).

“New Horizons just couldn’t be better ... we’re bearing down on our flyby target,” said lead scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

New Horizons is currently in electronic hibernation. Flight controllers at a Johns Hopkins University lab in Laurel, Maryland, will awaken the spacecraft in June and start getting it ready for the flyby.

The spacecraft was launched in 2006.

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