18 months into its mission, NASA's Curiosity rover has turned its camera skyward and snapped a picture of a tiny dot in the Martian twilight.
But it's not just any dot - it's the Earth and her natural satellite, the Moon - home to the seven billion humans who first sent it on its mission.
The picture, tweeted early Thursday morning, shows the Earth and the Moon as the brightest points of light in the sky. NASA says a human observer with normal vision, if standing on the surface of the red planet, could easily distinguish the Earth and the Moon as two bright 'evening stars.'
Curiosity captured the humbling image on January 31, 2014, or Sol 529 - the equivalent number of Martian days - 80 minutes after sunset.
At the time of the photo, the distance between the Earth and the Mars was approximately 160 million kilometres.
Curiosity, a 1 ton car-sized robotic remote vehicle, was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011 and successfully touched down on Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, on August 6, 2012.
The rover's mission is to discover a habital zone on the Martian surface in preparation for future human exploration.
