( Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 - the other two spacecraft headed into interstellar space - had similar vantage points, but technical challenges prevented them from getting such a shot.) Only three spacecraft have been capable of making such an observation: Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and New Horizons. Voyager 1 remains the first and only spacecraft that has attempted to photograph our solar system. It took eight years and six requests to get approval for the images. In fact, the Voyager team turned down several requests to take the images because of limited engineering resources and potential danger to the cameras from pointing them close to the Sun. Neither the “ Family Portrait” nor the “ Pale Blue Dot” photo was planned as part of the original Voyager mission. Here are 10 things you might not know about Voyager 1’s famous Pale Blue Dot photo. One of those images, the picture of Earth, would become known as the “ Pale Blue Dot.” The unique view of Earth as a tiny speck in the cosmos inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan's book, 'Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,' But the images gave humans an awe-inspiring and unprecedented view of their home world and its neighbors. A few key members didn’t make the shot: Mars was obscured by scattered sunlight bouncing around in the camera, Mercury was too close to the Sun and dwarf planet Pluto was too tiny, too far away and too dark to be detected. It captured Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Earth and Venus. The spacecraft was out beyond Neptune when mission managers commanded it to look back for a final time and snap images of the worlds it was leaving behind on its journey into interstellar space. First-Ever Solar System Family Portrait (1990)

A pale blue dot