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NASA spacecraft photographs Earth from 870 million miles away

An image taken by a doomed NASA probe between the rings of Saturn shows just how small our planet is from the depths of space.

The image, shot from 870 million miles away, shows our planet as a tiny dot – with our moon as a smaller grey dot beside it.

The image shows Saturn’s A and F rings in the foreground – captured by a tiny spacecraft which is set to crash into Saturn later this year.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft soared past Saturn’s biggest moon for the last time on Saturday, tapping its gravity to slingshot into a series of exploratory dives inside the planet’s rings, followed by a final fatal plunge into the gas giant.

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After nearly 20 years of traveling in space, Cassini used the gravitational tug of Titan, a moon resembling primordial Earth, to hurl itself into a new orbit that will pass through an unexplored region between Saturn’s cloud tops and its rings.

After 22 orbits, the probe is set to crash into Saturn in September.