Curiosity Shows Us How Martians Would See Earth…and It’s Stunning
It’s an intimate portrait of our home planet.
In late January, according to NASA, its Curiosity rover snapped the first ever picture of Earth from Mars. In the photo Earth resembles an evening star with the moon, a smaller point of light, shining nearby.
Curiosity utilized its “Mastcam” or its left eye camera to snap the photo. This intensely significant event occurred on the rover’s 529th day of its mission on Mars, and just about 80 min after sunset on the red planet. At the moment the camera shutter blinked, Earth and Mars were approximately 99 million miles away from each other.
The publicly released image has been slightly edited, though only to eliminate the effects of cosmic rays. The image can be seen on Curiosity’s official Twitter feed, along with the text, “Look back in wonder. My first picture of Earth from the surface of Mars.”
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