If you have aspirations to become a Red Planet colonizer some day, we now have an idea of how Earth and the moon look from Mars so you’ll kind of know what to expect once you set foot on extraterrestrial land for the first time. The thought of Earthlings actually living there still feels a bit far-fetched, but in October, President Obama said we’re going to Mars sooner than we think. That means whether you feel a Mars Colony is hot or not, it’s probably in your best interest to get fully acquainted with these Martian #views before you become an citizen of the neighboring planet.
According to Esquire, NASA’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took combined images of the Earth and the moon that were eventually used to create a single photo. From the not-so-meager distance of 40 million miles away, the blurry image shows our home planet and its satellite in a way that we’ve never seen them before.
We’ve seen some pretty impressive views from space, but if you have no idea WTF you’re looking at here, NASA must’ve anticipated some confusion. Here’s their breakdown of this interesting albeit fuzzy Martian perspective:
“The reddish feature in the middle of the Earth image is Australia. Southeast Asia appears as the reddish area (due to vegetation) near the top; Antarctica is the bright blob at bottom-left. Other bright areas are clouds.”
There you have it, future space travelers. Go forth and be brave. We’ll be back here chillin’ on Earth, waiting on you to post your first selfie from Mars.
