The European Space Agency’s spacecraft celebrated its 20th anniversary with a nostalgic look at its home planet. You’ve never seen the Earth and the Moon like this before.

The Mars Express spacecraft recently celebrated its 20th year in space with a nostalgic look from the Red Planet to the Earth and Moon. In images taken by the European Space Agency (ESA), our planet and its natural satellite appear as nothing more than a large white dot intersected by a smaller white dot.

And while it’s not the most impressive view ever seen from space, the Mars Express photo shows the distance between Earth and the Red Planet and what a feat it has been to place vehicles on and around our neighboring planet.

The images draw comparisons to the famous image of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in February 1990, where our planet also appears as a speck called the “Pale Blue Dot”. The image prompted astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan to reflect on Earth’s fragility and humanity’s responsibility to care for the only planet known to harbor life. And thirty years after Sagan clarified that message, it has never seemed more important.

“On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the launch of Mars Express, we wanted to bring Carl Sagan’s thoughts back to the present day when climate change and the environmental crisis make them more relevant than ever,” said part of the team. image and announced Jorge Hernández Bernal, a researcher at the University of the Basque Country.

“In these simple photos from Mars Express, Earth is the size of an ant when viewed from 100 meters away, and we’re all there. Even if we’ve seen images like this before, it’s still humbling to stop and think. We have to deal with the pale blue dot, there’s no planet B.”

The first image from space was taken by Mars Express on July 3, 2020, when it was just 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) from home, looking at the Earth and Moon.

The Mars Express spacecraft reached Mars orbit in December of that year and entered its highly elliptical orbit on Christmas Day 2003. And as this new image taken some 300 million kilometers from Earth shows, the Mars Orbiter has been a Christmas present for planetary scientists ever since.

These exclusive images were captured using the High Definition Channel (SRC) of the Mars Express High Definition Stereo Camera (HRSC). The main role of this instrument was to observe the two moons of Mars and background stars around the Red Planet.

Taken on May 15, May 21, and June 2, 2023, the Earth and Moon images cover more than half of the Moon’s 29.5-day orbit around our planet. The final image was taken just before a special event where Mars Express transmitted images captured by the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) for the first anniversary of the “Live from Mars” broadcast.

“These images have no scientific value, but as conditions allowed us to bring HRSC to Earth and from VMC to Mars shortly, we took the opportunity to create our own home portrait on this incredible mission axis for Mars Express,” Mars said. Express crew member Nimetsky of the Daniel Thirsch Center for Aeronautics and Space.

Mars Express may be away from Earth for a full two decades, but the ESA spacecraft has a lot of work to do before it retires. The mission has been extended several times, the most recent confirmed in March of this year, and Mars Express will operate until at least December 31, 2026. Source