14 DAY TRIAL // Mission controllers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, have recently released a new image collected by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity, showing our planet as the only bright object in the Martian skies. Our entire world is nothing more than a dot in this amazing photo.
The image was snapped by Curiosity on January 31 and shows Earth as an evening star in the skies of Mars. At that time, the spacecraft was around 160 million kilometers (99 million miles) away from home. JPL scientists say that a human observing this vista would have seen the Moon as well, as a second, distinct evening star close to Earth.
Curiosity used its Mast Camera for this image, on sol (Martian day) 529 of its mission. The photo was collected around 80 minutes after sunset, the team adds. Though usually called the Big Blue Marble or the Pale Blue Dot, Earth looked nothing more than a white speck in the dark as seen from Mars.
The MSL rover was developed for NASA by contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin and was launched towards the Red Planet on November 26, 2011, from SLC-41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The 900-kilogram (2,000-pound) rover reached its landing site, Aeolis Palus in the middle of Gale Crater, on August 6, 2012.