The European Space Agency (ESA) celebrated the 20th anniversary of the launch of the first Mars probe in style. Today (June 2), ESA conducted the first “live from Mars” by beaming home photos from Mars Express orbiter in real time, or as close to real time as possible given the Red Planet is now. About 186 million miles (300 million kilometers) from Earth.

That distance is almost 17 light minutes, which is how long it took for Mars Express to communicate with flight control here on Earth. ESA officials said the Mars Express team has been working for months to develop the tools that will enable today’s live broadcast.

This was a new territory; the team was used to processing and broadcasting footage every few days rather than live (or near-live), so there was no guarantee that everything would work properly during the unprecedented webcast. But today the photos came just in time.

“Oh! Here it is! About seven minutes after the ESA clock, a commentator said, “This is the first image from Mars and the most realistic image you’ll ever get, unless you’re traveling to Mars, the Red Planet itself.” Long webcast starting at 4:00 p.m. GMT.

This image, and others that followed it within the hour, showed a slightly blurred part of Mars captured by the probe’s Visual Tracking Camera (VMC). Each successive image captured a slightly different view of the planet as it orbited the Mars Express.

VMC was originally conceived as an engineering tool; Its primary job was to document the departure of the European landing Beagle 2, which set off with Mars Express on June 2, 2003.

This separation occurred in orbit around Mars on Christmas Day 2003, according to schedule. The Beagle-2 apparently landed safely, but failed to search the house. Investigators later determined that one or more of the lander’s four solar panels were probably not properly deployed, blocking the Beagle 2’s communications antenna, dooming it to eternal silence on the Martian surface.

The task force closed VMC shortly after Beagle 2 was released, but reopened it in 2007 to serve as an education and outreach tool. The camera also came to make scientific observations.

“We’ve developed new, more sophisticated operating and imaging techniques to get better results from the camera, making it the eighth Mars Express science instrument,” VMC team member Jorge Hernandez Bernal said on Wednesday (31 May). said.

Mars Express has accomplished a lot with these vehicles during its nearly two decades on the Red Planet. For example, the orbiter smelled methane in the thin Martian atmosphere, discovered a possible salt lake below Mars’ south pole, and mapped the ice composition at both poles of the planet.

“These findings have far-reaching implications,” ESA officials said in a statement today. “Since water is a vital ingredient for life as we know it, Mars Express has sparked increased interest in future missions to the Red Planet focused on investigating the possibility of microbial life in the past or present.”

Mars Express is doing well and its explorations should continue: ESA recently extended its mission until at least 2026. Source