Tonight's first livestream from Mars

The European Space Agency will conduct the first livestream from Mars with the Mars Express spacecraft at 11:00 p.m. today.

Simulation of the Mars Express spacecraft operating in Martian orbit. Photo: ESA

The livestream event commemorates the 20th anniversary of the launch of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft. The spacecraft lifted off on a Soyuz-FG/Fregat rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 2, 2003. The spacecraft was tasked with taking 3D images of the Martian surface, allowing experts to observe the planet in greater detail.

Those interested can watch the livestream, which will last for about an hour, on ESA’s YouTube channel. However, new images will be streamed every 50 seconds rather than a continuous stream.

“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,” said James Godfrey, Mars Express operations manager at NASA’s mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany.

The spacecraft typically records observations and data while not directly connected to Earth, so the images are stored until they can be sent back, according to the ESA. Depending on the position of Mars and Earth in their orbits around the Sun, the data transfer between the two planets can take anywhere from 3 to 22 minutes.

During today’s livestream, the time from when the image is captured from Mars orbit until it appears on viewers’ screens is expected to be about 18 minutes. Of that, 17 minutes are needed for light to travel from Mars to Earth (considering the current positions of the two planets) and about a minute is needed to travel through wires and servers on the ground.

"Please note, we have never tried anything like this before, so we are not really sure about the exact time it takes for the signals to travel to the ground," ESA shared.

Thu Thao (According to CNN )

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