NASA Mars rover Curiosity has been trekking across the Red Planet for the past several months, making startling new discoveries. Now, the rover has taken a spectacular new picture of its home planet--Earth. The new image also includes the moon, floating in the depths of space just below.
The new images were taken by Curiosity about 80 minutes after sunset during the 529 Martian day on Jan. 31 2014. The distance between Earth and Mars when the rover took the photo was about 99 million miles.
Curiosity has made a wealth of discoveries during its time on Mars. It's discovered dried-up stream beds and has taken samples for further research. Currently, operators are gearing up for the rover to drive over the largest sand dune it's encountered so far. About three feet high, the dune may pose a technical challenge for Curiosity. Once at the top, though, the rover will take pictures of the valley in front of it. Then NASA will drive Curiosity toward a location called KMS-9. There, the rover will drill into freshly exposed bedrock in hopes of finding traces of complex carbon chemistry. Any signatures found would help build onto the picture being composed of Gale crater, which may have been a site where microbial life once flourished billions of years ago.
Curiosity's mission is to assess ancient habitable environments on the Red Planet. In addition, it's meant to examine major changes in Martian environmental conditions in order to learn a bit more about the history of the planet.
Want to see more of the images? You can check them out here. In addition, you can find a zoomed-in view of Earth and the moon here.
Want to learn more about the Mars rover Curiosity? You can learn all about the mission by visiting the Facebook page here.
