The European Space Agency (ESA) is hosting the first-ever live stream from Mars which is expected to reveal stunning detail never before seen on the Red Planet.
The agency’s Mars Express orbiter will share new images every 50 seconds on Friday starting at 11:45 a.m. ET as it hangs more than 11,000 miles above the Martian surface.
And the stream will be accessible via the ESA YouTube channel.
Although the event is hosted live, it takes up to 22 minutes for data to travel the more than 187 million kilometers from Mars to Earth.
There are only a few historical examples where humans on Earth have seen live images or video from space, including NASA’s DART mission that crashed a probe into a moon, and the Apollo missions.
The European Space Agency is set to host a Mars live stream on Friday
The ESA said the live stream pays tribute to the Mars Express 20 years in space.
Mars Express, so called because of its rapid and streamlined development time, represents the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first visit to another planet in the solar system.
The spacecraft, launched in 2003, borrowed technology from ESA’s Rosetta and Mars 96 missions.
Since science operations began in 2004, the sustainable orbiter has given scientists a whole new view of Earth’s intriguing neighbor.
It now helps answer fundamental questions about the geology, atmosphere, surface environment, water history and potential for life on Mars.
Mars Express, so called because of its rapid and streamlined development time, represents the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first visit to another planet in the solar system.
The spacecraft, launched in 2003, borrowed technology from ESA’s Rosetta mission and the Mars 96 mission.
Since science operations began in 2004, the sustainable orbiter has given scientists a whole new view of Earth’s intriguing neighbor.
It now helps answer fundamental questions about the geology, atmosphere, surface environment, water history and potential for life on Mars.
The spacecraft’s high-resolution camera returned thousands of spectacular 3D views of the Martian surface.
An instrument has discovered hydrated minerals that only form in liquid water, confirming that Mars was once much wetter than it is today.
The first radar sounder ever to orbit another planet has detected layers of water ice underground.
The agency’s Mars Express orbiter will share new images every 50 seconds on Friday starting at 11:45 a.m. ET as it hangs more than 11,000 miles above the Martian surface.
Another instrument has detected enough ice in the polar caps to create a global ocean 36 feet deep, revealing vast plains of permafrost around the South Pole.
Mars Express found the highest clouds above any planetary surface at 62 miles.
The mission found indications of the possible presence of methane, which is attributed to active volcanism and biochemical processes on Earth.
Its highly elliptical orbit has allowed the spacecraft to look beyond Mars to monitor its two tiny moons, particularly the innermost satellite Phobos, which has been studied in unprecedented detail.
It served as a communications relay between Earth and various NASA spacecraft, including the Phoenix lander and several surface rovers.
“The Mars Express Visual Surveillance Camera, dubbed the Mars Webcam, was not intended for such a record,” ESA said in a statement.
“His main job 20 years ago was to monitor the separation of the Beagle 2 lander from the ‘MEX’ spacecraft. Once he did that and reported back, he was turned off.
“Like the surveillance cameras aboard ESA’s Juice spacecraft, which return images of instruments and solar arrays being deployed, it was not meant to be a scientific instrument.
“It was not necessary to take precise images. And yet, here we are.
To celebrate the long and productive life of Mars Express, teams have spent the past two months developing tools that would allow higher quality, scientifically processed imagery to be streamed live for a full hour.
James Godfrey, Spacecraft Operations Manager at ESA’s Mission Control Center in Germany, said: “This is an old camera, originally intended for engineering purposes, at a distance of almost three million miles from Earth – this hasn’t been tried before and to be honest, we’re not 100% sure this will work.
“But I’m pretty optimistic. Normally we see images of Mars and know they were taken days ago. I’m excited to see Mars as it is now – as close to a Martian “now” as possible!
