The first-ever image of speck of red Martian dust was sent by NASA’s Mars Phoenix, which was taken through an atomic force microscope. The picture was the fist image to be shown at a higher magnification than anything ever seen from another planet.

NASA informed that the dust particle is only about one micrometer and is representative of the dust that cloaks Mars and thus produces the planet’s unique red soil and making the appearance of the sky pink.

Urs Staufer of the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, who leads a Swiss consortium that made the lander's microscope and the Phoenix co-investigator, said, “This is the first picture of a clay-sized particle on Mars, and the size agrees with predictions from the colors seen in sunsets on the Red Planet.”

Since May 25, when the Phoenix landed on the Mars, it had been exploring the Martian artic circle and since then it has already provided definite proof that ice and water exists on it. The latest NASA spacecraft sent to Mars as the space agency is trying to find out whether life even in microbial from exists there or not.

The Phoenix’s on-board atomic force microscope, which took the latest picture, has the ability to see the particles in three dimensions and can detail shapes as small as 1/1000th the width of a human hair. It can even magnify the picture to 100 times than the lander’s optical microscope.

Staufer further reported, “This is proof of the microscope's potential. We are now ready to start doing scientific experiments that will add a new dimension to measurements being made by other Phoenix lander instruments.”