Hello down there: NASA Mars Orbiter takes picture of Curiosity rover as it probes isolated Martian hill

This awe-inspiring image shows Nasa's Curiosity Mars Rover as it drives across the red planet and was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite - 200 miles above the surface, the Daily Mail reports.

The car-sized robotic rover and the tracks it makes as it drives on the surface of the alien planet, 34 million miles away from Earth, are clearly visible in this view from orbit, acquired on April 11 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's orbiter, the largest ever carried on a deep space mission.

Scientists are using NASA's Curiosity Mars rover to probe a rock layer surrounding the base of a small butte (an isolated hill with steep sides) called 'Mount Remarkable'.

It may be a potential target for investigating using tools on the rover's robotic arm.

Curiosity's science team refers to the rock layer surrounding the base of Mount Remarkable, which is about five meters high, as the 'middle unit' because its location is intermediate between rocks that form buttes in the area and lower-lying rocks that show a pattern of striations - a series of ridges, furrows or linear marks.

Depending on what the mission scientists learn from a close-up look at the rock and identification of chemical elements in it, a site on this middle unit may become the third rock that Curiosity samples with its drill.

The rover carries laboratory instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill. The mission's first two drilled samples, in an area called Yellowknife Bay near Curiosity's landing site, yielded evidence last year for an ancient lakebed environment with available energy and ingredients favorable for microbial life.

The rover's current location, where multiple types of rocks are exposed close together, is called 'the Kimberley'.

Here and, later, at outcrops on the slope of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, researchers plan to use Curiosity's science instruments to learn more about habitable past conditions and environmental changes.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The project designed and built Curiosity and operates the rover on Mars. Last week Nasa spoke out on the controversy surrounding a strange 'glow' spotted on Mars - and says it is either a shiny rock or a glitch in the Curiosity rover's camera.