The image was collected by MESSENGER years ago, experts say

Mar 8, 2014 09:06 GMT  ·  By

Officials with the American space agency have just released an image of Earth collected by the NASA Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft, in mid-2005. The false-color view shows Earth's plants in red, and cloud covers in white and blue.

MESSENGER launched to study the innermost planet in our solar system on August 3, 2004, aboard a Delta II rocket. Takeoff occurred from Space Launch Complex 17B (SLC-17B) at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), in Florida. The spacecraft spent 7 years en route to Mercury.

During this time, it carried out one flyby of Earth, on August 2, 2005, two flybys of Venus, on October 24, 2006, and June 5, 2007, and three flybys of Mercury (January 14 and October 6, 2008, and September 29, 2009). The probe entered orbit around its target planet on March 18, 2011.

During the 2005 flyby of Earth, MESSENGER snapped this false-color image of our planet in order to test and further calibrate its instruments. The field of view was centered on South America, but also includes small portions of Africa and North America, and was captured with the wide-angle camera in the probe's Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument.

The image is a triple-band composite that replaces infrared light with blue light to obtain the false-color effect. The MDIS is capable of collecting light at 11 different wavelengths, in the infrared and optical portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Plants appear red in this photo because healthy vegetation reflects more infrared radiation than damaged or diseases ones.