Nasa to Beam 'Global Selfie' to Outbound New Horizons Probe

A "global selfie" project that aims to send a special message from Earth to space via Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft has been approved by the US space agency.

Nasa has agreed to set aside 100MB data for the crowdsourced self-portrait of Earth on the New Horizons probe that will fly by Pluto in 2015 on its way out of the solar system.

Currently, the New Horizons spacecraft is not carrying any information about Earth.

Led by Hawaii-based artist Jon Lomberg, the "One Earth" project aims to beam pictures, sounds and other data representing human beings to Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft.

Lomberg now wants people from around the world to submit photos and other forms of media online.

(Also See: Nasa to Map Earth's Forests in 3D With GEDI Lidar)

Lomberg and his team also want to include images that reveal the dark side of Earth such as pictures of famine or the atomic bomb, media reports said.

In the meanwhile, what is considered the world's first selfie, which dates back to the 1850s, was recently auctioned away.

The selfie of Oscar Gustave Rejlander, a pioneering Swedish Victorian art photographer and an expert in photo-montage, was recently sold at an auction at Morphets in Harrogate, North Yorkshire for GBP 70,000.

"The owner brought the book to us with a reserve price of just GBP 100," Liz Pepper Darling from Morphets was quoted as saying in media reports.

The selfie was discovered in a leather-bound book of 70 albumen prints by the renowned Swedish artist also known as the father of art photography.

Written with agency inputs.