Posted on by Bob King

Send Your Sweetie An Out-Of-This-World Valentine

Mars has a lot of heart (s)! Send one to your Valentine Credit: NASA
Happy Valentine's Day from the Pluto New Horizon's mission! Click to download a pdf file you can print out and give as a valentine. Credit: NASA
Happy Valentine’s Day from the Pluto New Horizon’s mission! Click to download a high resolution pdf file you can print out. Credit: NASA

Still looking for the right card for your sweetheart this Valentine’s Day? Why not do it in cosmic proportion by getting NASA on your side?  The tender-hearted folks at agency may have just what you’re looking for.

The staff at the New Horizons mission headquarters offers two valentines this season that play off Pluto’s heart-shaped, icy plain Tombaugh Regio. While the temperature there hovers around 400 below,  you’re guaranteed a 98.6° smile when your sweetie opens the card and sees your love reflected in glittering nitrogen ice.

Mars has a lot of heart (s)! Click to send you Valentine a Red Planet-themed e-card. Credit: NASA
Mars has a lot of heart (s)! Click to select and send your Valentine a Red Planet-themed e-card. Credit: NASA

Pluto not your thing? Select from 12 different Mars e-card love greetings at this NASA site and blow your partner away in a Martian dust devil of love. Many of the heart-shaped features depicted on the cards are genuine features and include collapse pits, craters and mesas.

Pick from eight different valentines at the OSIRIS-Rex asteroid mission site. Credit: NASA
Click to pick from 8 different valentines at the OSIRIS-Rex asteroid mission site. Credit: NASA

Even the asteroids send their saucy wishes. Check out the delightful series of valentines from the upcoming OSIRIS-Rex sample return mission to 101955 Bennu, slated to launch in September this year and return a sample of the carbonaceous asteroid to Earth in 2023. If you go this route, I’d complement the card with a meal heavy on edible carbonaceous material at your partner’s favorite restaurant.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Spread the love for a happier planet.

Posted on by Jason Major

A Valentine From Voyager

Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as seen by Voyager 1 on Valentine's Day in 1990

On February 14, 1990, after nearly 13 years of travel through the outer Solar System, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft crossed the orbit of Pluto and turned its camera around, capturing photos of the planets as seen from that vast distance. It was a family portrait taken from over 4.4 billion kilometers away — the ultimate space Valentine.

Who says astronomy isn’t romantic?

Full mosaic of Voyager 1 images taken on Feb. 14, 1990 (NASA/JPL)
Full mosaic of Voyager 1 images taken on Feb. 14, 1990 (NASA/JPL)

“That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives… There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.”

– Carl Sagan

VoyagerValentineIt was the unique perspective above provided by Voyager 1 that inspired Carl Sagan to first coin the phrase “Pale Blue Dot” in reference to our planet. And it’s true… from the edges of the solar system Earth is just a pale blue dot in a black sky, a bright speck just like all the other planets. It’s a sobering and somewhat chilling image of our world… but also inspiring, as the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are now the farthest human-made objects in existence — and getting farther every second. They still faithfully transmit data back to us even now, over 35 years since their launches, from 18.5 and 15.2 billion kilometers away.

The Voyagers sure know the value of a long-term relationship.

See more news from the Voyager mission here.