Bound for the planet Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft takes a moment to look back at its home.

Both Earth and the moon are clearly visible in this image taken by MESSENGER’s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS). The probe was 18.4 million miles (29.6 million kilometers) from Earth at the time.

Launched on Aug. 3, 2004, MESSENGER is the first probe to visit Mercury since Mariner 10 passed by the planet three times between 1974 and 1975. The spacecraft is expected to fly past Earth on Aug. 2, 2005 in the first of a series of flybys to wind its way down to Mercury. The probe is expected to make two sweeps past Venus and three past Mercury before settling into a yearlong orbit around the small planet in March 2011.

MESSENGER trained its MDIS instrument on Earth for this image on May 11, 2005. Cloud bands are visible across North and South America, though the image’s contrast has been modified to increase the moon’s visibility in the same frame as the Earth.

-- SPACE.com Staff

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.