The Curiosity Mars rover has returned with photos of two asteroids, as seen from Mars. This is the first time that such images were taken from the Red Planet's surface.
The two asteroids captured were Ceres and Vista. Ceres is the largest asteroid located in the belt separating Mars and Jupiter; Vista, on the other hand, is the third largest. These two celestial bodies will be the destination of the Dawn mission that has already orbited around Vesta in 2011 and 2012. In 2015, Dawn will orbit Ceres which is also considered a dwarf planet.
"This imaging was part of an experiment checking the opacity of the atmosphere at night in Curiosity's location on Mars, where water-ice clouds and hazes develop during this season," camera team member Mark Lemmon said in a press release. "The two Martian moons were the main targets that night, but we chose a time when one of the moons was near Ceres and Vista in the sky."
Images of Ceres and Vista were observed in the picture taken by Curiosity's Mast Camera on April 20, 2014. The two asteroids are larger than our own planet and are being studied to be used in two of NASA's future projects, including the upcoming asteroid redirect mission. This mission includes using a robotic spacecraft to capture an asteroid and redirect its orbit around the moon. Astronauts will be deployed to collect samples of this asteroid to be used for future studies in Earth.
Another project in the works consists of efforts to identify asteroids that may cause dangerous implications to human populations and to track their movements through space.
Curiosity is one of the rovers studying the Red Planet and right now; it is on a mission to find clues regarding the ancient environment of Mars. The rover was built by the engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology.
