"Homesick" isn't a term that's normally used with unmanned space probes - and we're not going to use it in this article, either. But one of the pictures from the Saturn-exploring probe ESA space probe">Cassini also includes a picture of Earth seen from that planet. That picture is the one you see to the right - with a helpful red arrow to point out where we are.

And we can't help but wonder - when the day comes that human feet walk the surface of other planets in the solar system (but not likely Saturn, being mostly a ball of gas), when those explorers look up in the sky towards their home-world, how would they feel?

Saturn - and the Cassini probe - is about a billion and a half miles away from our blue planet. Amazing how something that far away can still show up in a camera shot (but then again, starlight reaches us from light-years). From that distance, Earth - and all its life and history - is a speck in a field of black. Talk about changing your perspective.

Cassini is a joint NASA-ESA four-year mission to explore Saturn. The probe was launched in 1997. Just recently, the probe also discovered a new, almost invisible ring nestled within Saturn's more visible and famous rings.