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  • “Exploration is in our nature.” - Carl Sagan

Emily Lakdawalla • Nov 12, 2009

Crescent Earth

Just hours away from its Earth flyby, Rosetta is busily snapping images and gathering other science data. Among other things, it's using its spectrometric instruments to try to follow up on the Moon water discovery made by Chandrayaan-1, Cassini, and Deep Impact earlier this year; it's gathering tracking data to follow up on the investigation of the "flyby anomaly"; and it's gathering some images for purely photographic purposes, including this lovely view of our Earth as a skinny crescent.

Crescent Earth from Rosetta
Crescent Earth from Rosetta Rosetta viewed Earth in a thin crescent phase as it approached for its November 13, 2009 flyby. This image is one in a series taken to make an animation of the rotating Earth over a 24-hour period.Image: ESA / OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / RSSD / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA / Gordan Ugarković

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