The rover, Spirit, landed on the Martian surface in January 2004. Shortly after landing in the Gusev crater on Mars, Spirit wasted no time in sending images of its new surroundings. A couple of months later, it took a breathtaking image that offered a view of Earth with great significance.
“Shortly before dawn on March 8, the Spirit camera managed to capture Earth as a bright star, looking very similar to Venus for terrestrial observers. This was the first photograph of Earth from another planetary surface,” NASA said in an article published this week on its website.
This was the first photograph of Earth from another planetary surface
It took almost 10 years for another NASA rover, Curiosity, to capture its own image of Earth, this one from inside the Gale crater on Mars. The image from Curiosity stands out because it also shows the Moon despite being taken 159 million kilometers away.
“These images, and others taken from Earth from increasingly distant points in the last eight decades, provide a new perspective on the place our planet occupies in the solar system,” says NASA.
Spirit explored the Martian surface for almost another six years, and the rover’s last contact occurred on March 22, 2010.
Meanwhile, Curiosity continues its work in Gale Crater to this day, and another rover, Perseverance – the most advanced NASA rover to date – has been exploring Jezero Crater since it arrived there in a spectacular fashion in February 2021.
In December 1968, another iconic image of Earth was not captured by a rover, but by retired astronaut Bill Anders during the Apollo 8 lunar mission.
In recent years, astronauts aboard the International Space Station have also captured sublime images of our planet from 250 miles above.
