NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Captures First Image of Asteroids Ceres and Vesta

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has taken the first image of asteroids from the surface of Mars. It has captured the two brightest asteroids; Ceres and Vesta.

The image of the two massive residents of the asteroid belt, Ceres and Vesta, is the first taken by Curiosity Mars rover from the surface of Mars.  The imaging of the two asteroids was a part of an experiment that aimed at checking the opacity of the atmosphere in Curiosity's location on Mars, where water-ice clouds and hazes are known to form during this season.

The two asteroids captured in the image i.e. Ceres and Vesta are known to be the largest surviving protoplanets placed between Mars and Jupiter. Vesta is the second most massive asteroid after the dwarf planet Ceres. The two brightest asteroids are the destination for NASA's Dawn Mission. In the year 2011-2012, Dawn orbited Vesta and is currently heading to its next location Ceres where it will begin orbiting the dwarf planet next year.

In the latest picture captured by Curiosity, Ceres and Vesta appear as small and dim streaks. The picture was taken during the 12 second exposure taken by Curiosity's Mars Camera (Mastcam) on 20^th April 2014. 

The annotate version of the image also has insets from other observations made the same night. CLICK HERE to view the image.

Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station said, "The two Martian moons were the main targets that night, but we chose a time when one of the moons was near Ceres and Vesta in the sky."

The two asteroids are much farther from Earth's orbit compared to other near-Earth asteroids. The near-Earth asteroids are under consideration for NASA's asteroid initiative.

The space agency is working on several concepts for the redirecting mission in which they plan to use a robotic spacecraft to capture a near-Earth asteroid or remove a boulder from the surface of a large asteroid.  Later the spacecraft will try to redirect the object into the stable orbit around the moon.

Ever since Curiosity landed on Gale Crater on August 2012, it has traveled  3.8 miles (6.1 kilometers) on Mars and has taken over 143,000 images.