NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully documented a rare celestial event from the surface of Mars: the occultation of Earth by the Martian moon Phobos. The observation, which marks the first time such an event has been recorded from another planet, occurred on July 2, during the mission's 1,907th sol.

Using the Mastcam-Z instrument, the rover captured a sequence of images around 7 p.m. local solar time. The footage shows Earth, appearing as a tiny, pixel-sized point of light, moving behind the shadowed edge of the potato-shaped moon. At the time of the event, Earth was approximately 195 million miles away from the rover’s location at the rim of Jezero Crater.

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Mark Lemmon, a Mastcam-Z co-investigator at the Space Science Institute, noted that while Phobos frequently crosses the Martian sky and Earth remains visible for extended periods, capturing one directly behind the other requires precise planning and favorable conditions. Justin Maki, deputy principal investigator for the instrument at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, described the resulting composite as a unique "Earth self-portrait" featuring a "Phobos photobomb."

Astronomers classify this specific event as an occultation, occurring when a larger-appearing object obscures a more distant one. This differs from a transit, where a smaller-appearing object crosses the face of a larger one—a phenomenon Perseverance has previously observed when Martian moons cross the Sun.

Source: NASA