NASA's Curiosity rover has captured a stunning view from the surface of Mars: the first-ever image of Earth next to the Red Planet's moon Phobos.
Using its mast camera, or Mastcam for short, curiousity Earth was photographed setting in the Red Planet's night sky while one of Mars' moons, PhobosThe sun rises on September 5. The new image from the spacecraft, which consists of five short exposures and 12 long exposures, captures a rocky outcrop of Mars in the foreground and a wide sky with Earth and Phobos at the upper right. The image, which NASA shared online on September 13, shows Phobos on the left and Earth on the right.
“This is the first time that the two celestial bodies have been imaged together from the surface of Mars,” NASA officials said in a statement. statement He posted a new image. “From the vehicle’s perspective, the area involved would be about half the width of a thumb when held at arm’s length.”
Phobos is named after the Greek god of fear and is the largest of the Mars“Two moons. Its smaller companion is called” Deimos.
Phobos orbits the Red Planet three times a day at a distance of just 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) from the Martian surface, making it closer to its parent body than any other known natural moon of a planet.
Related to: Solar Eclipse on Mars! Perseverance Rover Captures Mars' Moon Phobos Crossing the Sun in Epic Video
Because of its close proximity to Mars, the Moon is believed to be on a collision course with Mars. It is approaching the planet at a rate of about six feet (1.8 meters) every hundred years, which means that it will either collide with the Red Planet in about 50 million years or be torn apart by Mars' gravity.
It was curiosity. Mars exploration For more than a decade, after the rover landed in Gale Crater in August 2012. The image of Earth and Phobos was taken on the 4295th Martian day, or solar day, of the Curiosity mission. A Martian day is about 24 hours and 40 minutes long, making it slightly longer than a single Earth day.
The rocky structure captured in the foreground of the new Curiosity image is a small hill called Texoli, located on lower Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater. Texoli is a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that Curiosity has been climbing since 2014 to help unravel the history of Mars.
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