NASA’s Curiosity takes first-ever photo of Earth from Mars

The Mars rover Curiosity has gone sentimental with a picture of its home planet, Earth, seen for the first time as a dot from the Red Planet’s surface.

After 529 (Martian) days spent in exploration of Mars’s soil and chemical composition, the robot took the opportune moment 80 minutes after sunset on January 31 to photograph the third rock from the sun, which at the time was located at a distance of about 160 million km (99 million miles) from Mars.

Zoomed-in pictures courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory show Earth’s moon as well.

Curiosity is the much-lauded effort by the American space agency’s Mars Science Laboratory Project to land a science vessel on the Martian surface for the purpose of studying its chemical composition, changing climate and if water – and life – has previously existed on the planet.