NASA's Mars Orbiter pictures Curiosity Rover on Mars

This is genuinely jaw-dropping stuff. A newly-released image shows NASA's Mars Science Laboratory "Curiosity" on the surface of the Red Planet.

The rover appears as a bluish dot near the lower right corner of this enhanced-colour view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The rover's tracks are visible extending from the landing site, "Bradbury Landing," in the left half of the scene. Two bright, relatively blue spots surrounded by darker patches are where the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's landing jets cleared away reddish surface dust at the landing site. North is toward the top. For scale, the two parallel lines of the wheel tracks are about 10 feet (3 metres) apart.

HiRISE shot this image on June 27, 2013, when Curiosity was at an outcrop called "Shaler" in the "Glenelg" area of Gale Crater. Subsequently the rover drove away from Glenelg toward the southwest.

Images: Rex