Eerie photo of Mars' horizon took NASA 3 months to capture

For the first time, a spacecraft has captured a panoramic shot of Mars' horizon from space. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)

NASA's longest-serving Mars robot has captured a unique photo of the Red Planet's crater-covered horizon that mimics what future Martian astronauts could one day see with their own eyes. And it took mission scientists more than three months to plan and capture.

The new image, which was released by NASA on Nov. 28, shows a segment of Mars's pockmarked surface, as well as a narrow layer of the planet's wafer-thin atmosphere above the horizon. NASA's Odyssey Orbiter, which has been flying non-stop loops around the Red Planet since it arrived in 2001, captured the photo sometime in May using its built-in Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS).