NASA robots take pictures of Earth and Venus from Mars

The dense dust in Mars's atmosphere makes the Earth and Venus look like tiny dots in a camera photo of the Curiosity robot.

Photo of Earth and Venus taken by Curiosity on June 5. (Photo: NASA).

The Curiosity probe robot points the Mast (Mastcam) camera to the sky about 75 minutes after the sun sets to take pictures on June 5, 2020. According to NASA, there is more dust in Mars's atmosphere at this time of year, making the twilight sky exceptionally bright. Therefore, a part of the robot's activity that day was to measure brightness.

The two photos that Curiosity took on 2,784 on Mars were combined into panoramic photos showing the Earth and Venus looking like small dots in the sky. Normally, the two planets look like bright stars when viewed from Mars, but because of the large amount of dust they appear to be smaller, according to Mastcam researchers.  

Curiosity takes many interesting photos while on duty, from asteroids flying past to the blue sunsets on Mars. At the end of 2019, the robot took a panoramic photo of the red planet with the highest resolution of 1.8 billion pixels. Curiosity is the largest and most versatile exploration robot NASA has ever taken to Mars. Its main task is to find out whether in the past Mars had conditions suitable for life. By the end of the summer of 2020, another exploration robot called Perseverance will be launched to Mars.