Call it a Red Planet two-for-one. A spacecraft orbiting Mars snapped an amazing photo of another probe on the Martian surface.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spied the agency's Curiosity rover and snapped the newly released image on Dec. 13, 2014. At the time the picture was taken, Curiosity was examining the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater, according to NASA. The rover can be seen in the image as a grey dot inside a blue box. MRO's high Resolution Imagining Science Experiment (HiRISE) took the picture, which covers an area of approximately 360 yards (330 meters), NASA officials added.
"The bright features in the landscape are sedimentary rock and the dark areas are sand," NASA officials wrote in an image description. "The HiRISE team plans to periodically image Curiosity, as well as NASA's other active Mars rover, Opportunity, as the vehicles continue to explore Mars."
This isn't the first time MRO snapped a photo of Curiosity. The orbiter — which arrived at the Red Planet in 2006 — actually managed to take an image of the rover on its way to a successfully landed on the surface of the planet three years ago. MRO took the image as Curiosity was hanging beneath a parachute that brought it safely down to the planet's surface.
The orbiting spacecraft has imaged other robots on Mars as well. MRO photographed the Viking landers, which touched down on the rust-colored surface in 1976, and the probe has also imaged the Spirit rover, Opportunity's twin that beamed its last communication to Earth in 2010 before going silent.
MRO has made quite a few discoveries since arriving in orbit around Mars. The probe discovered ice and signs of water on the Red Planet and helped scientists pick out Curiosity's landing spot by beaming back images of the Martian surface.
Explore a zoomable version of the image directly through NASA:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1776
Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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