The Earth and its moon as seen in 1992 by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, on its way past us to the planet Jupiter. The craft was named for Italian Renaissance scientist Galileo Galilei, who was born on this date in 1564. Galileo famously ran afoul of Pope Urban VIII for championing the idea of heliocentrism, that the Earth and other bodies of tour solar system orbit the sun, for which he was tried by the Inquisition and found guilty of heresy.

The Galileo spacecraft explored the Jovian system of moons discovered by its namesake for years, before burning up in Jupiter’s atmosphere in September of 2003 (image credit: NASA/JPL/color composite Gordan Ugarkovic).