Watch Spectacular Mars Solar Eclipses Caught On Camera By NASA's Curiosity

NASA's Curiosity Rover managed to capture two solar eclipses caused by two of Mars' moons, Phobos and Deimos, on camera.

With the help of the solar filters on Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam), the rover obtained imagery of Mars' two moons crossing in front of the Sun in March. NASA shared the unique view of the solar eclipses on its official Twitter, revealing that the images "will be used to better understand the moons' orbits."

The Mars probe imaged Phobos, the larger of the two Mars moons at 16 miles (26 kilometers) across, passing in front of the Sun on March 26, according to NASA's website. This occurrence is referred to as an annular eclipse as the moon doesn't completely cover the Sun when Phobos crosses it.

Meanwhile, Deimos, which is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) in diameter, was captured on camera "transiting the Sun" on March 17. The solar eclipses happened on Curiosity's 2,359th and 2,350th Martian day, respectively.

This isn't the first time the Mars Curiosity Rover has observed and captured solar eclipses during its mission. However, the imagery the spacecraft, along with other rovers, obtains from these events are significant in ongoing studies of the satellites' orbits around Mars.

Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, a co-investigator with Curiosity's Mastcam, revealed that astronomers knew much less about the orbits of Mars' moons before NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers arrived on the Red Planet in 2004.

When one of the spacecrafts tried to capture Deimos crossing in front of the Sun for the first time, they discovered one vital fact about the moon. It was actually 25 miles (40 kilometers) away from where they believed it to be.

"More observations over time help pin down the details of each orbit," Lemmon said. "Those orbits change all the time in response to the gravitational pull of Mars, Jupiter or even each Martian moon pulling on the other."

Aside from helping scientists learn more about their orbits, events such as the solar eclipses also give people more insight into what Mars is really like.

"Eclipses, sunrises and sunsets and weather phenomena all make Mars real to people, as a world both like and unlike what they see outside, not just a subject in a book," Lemmon said.

Aside from imaging solar eclipses, the Curiosity rover has also been exploring the Martian surface for signs of ancient life and water. New research published in Nature Geoscience recently revealed that the probe detected a methane spike on the Red Planet on June 15, 2013 during its exploration of the Gale Crater.

Methane is a requirement of habitability and could even be a sign of life. However, the research did not explain how methane came to exist on Mars and no other spikes of it have been detected in the 20 months of data analyzed by a team of scientists led by Marco Giuranna from the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology in Rome, Italy.