The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft livestream on June 2 provided the closest to live images from Mars yet.
Simulation of the Mars Express spacecraft operating in Martian orbit. Photo: ESA
During the livestream that started at 11pm on June 2 (Hanoi time) and lasted for an hour, new images were taken every few dozen seconds. The time it takes for the signal to travel from Mars to Earth, based on the current positions of the two planets, is about 16 minutes and 44 seconds. The images are then transmitted via wires and servers on the ground.
The livestream provided its first image at around 11:06 a.m., showing a small section of Mars that the Mars Express captured at 10:48 p.m. With each image, Mars moves across the screen from the upper right corner to the lower left corner as the Mars Express orbits Mars. In the final image of the livestream, taken at 11:42 p.m., Mars has almost disappeared from the spacecraft's view.
The livestream event commemorates the 20th anniversary of the launch of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express. The Soyuz-FG/Fregat rocket carried the spacecraft and its Beagle 2 lander off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 2, 2003. The mission was to capture 3D images of the Martian surface, allowing experts to observe the planet in greater detail.
Images taken by the Mars Express spacecraft were released during the first livestream from Mars. Video: ESA
Mars Express and Beagle 2 arrived in orbit around Mars on Christmas Day 2003. Beagle 2 also landed on Mars that day but was unable to transmit signals back, likely because its solar arrays did not deploy properly and blocked its communications antenna. Mars Express continued to operate as planned, studying the red planet in detail with seven different scientific instruments.
The livestream shows images taken by Mars Express' Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC). The VMC was originally designed to monitor the separation of Beagle 2. It was turned off after that job was completed. However, scientists turned the VMC back on in 2007 to take pictures.
“We have developed new, more complex image processing and operating methods to get better results from the camera, making it the eighth scientific instrument of Mars Express,” said Jorge Hernández Bernal, a member of the VMC team.
The Mars Express operations team has spent the past few months preparing for the livestream, including developing the tools needed to get images from the VMC online as quickly as possible.
"Normally, we look at images from Mars and know they were taken days ago. Now I'm excited to be able to see Mars live, or as close to 'live' as possible," James Godfrey, Mars Express operations manager at NASA's mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, said before the livestream.
Thu Thao (According to Space )
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