No one would have believed, in the last years of the 19th century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us.—War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells (1898), as adapted for Jeff Wayne's musical version of the book.

A century after H.G. Wells wrote his novel about the invasion of the Earth by Martians, the first photograph of our planet as seen from Mars has been made. It is what Martians would see if they scrutinized the Earth.

The camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft currently orbiting the red planet photographed Earth, the moon and Jupiter, as seen in the evening sky of Mars, at 9 a.m. EDT, May 8, 2003.

"This first-ever image of its kind not only shows Mother Earth as a tiny alien world in the vast darkness of space, but also includes a view of the giant planet Jupiter and some of its larger moons," Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), of San Diego, which operates the camera aboard MGS, said in a statement accompanying the release of the image.