The NASA space probe Voyager 1 took Pale Blue Dot (detail pictured), a photograph of Earth from a record distance of 40.5 astronomical units (6.06 billion km; 3.76 billion mi).

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the United States's civil space program, aeronautics research and space research. Established in 1958, it succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the American space development effort a distinct civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. It has since led most of America's space exploration programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968–1972 Apollo program missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA supports the International Space Station (ISS) along with the Commercial Crew Program and oversees the development of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the lunar Artemis program.

Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was launched 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2. It communicates through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth. Real-time distance and velocity data are provided by NASA and JPL. At a distance of 166.40 AU as of May 2025, it is the most distant human-made object from Earth. Voyager 1 is also projected to reach a distance of one light day from Earth in November of 2026.

Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from an unprecedented distance of over 6 billion kilometers, as part of that day's Family Portrait series of images of the Solar System.

The astronomical unit is a unit of length defined to be exactly equal to 149597870700 m. Historically, the astronomical unit was conceived as the average Earth-Sun distance, before its modern redefinition in 2012.