A live video feed will be broadcast from Mars for the first time from 1600 UTC today, using a once outdated camera aboard the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter.
The ESA stream, embedded above, will run for one hour. However, due to the great distance between Earth and Mars, the images will take 17 minutes to reach us, and an additional minute to pass through various receivers and servers on the ground, making it not quite “live”.
The orbiter Visual surveillance camera (VMC) will transmit a new frame every 50 seconds. This camera normally stores the images it takes and transmits them in batches every two days, so this is the first time ESA has attempted to release them as they are taken.
The event was organized to mark the 20th anniversary of ESA’s Mars Express, the mission that placed the Mars Express orbiter into orbit around the planet and deployed the ill-fated Beagle 2 lander.
Despite Beagle 2’s failure to communicate with Earth after reaching the surface, the orbiter became Europe’s first mission to another planet and continues to operate today in an elliptical orbit of approximately 300 to 10,000 kilometers. .
James Godfrey at ESA said in a press release that there is no guarantee that the stream will go as planned. “This is an old camera, originally intended for engineering purposes, at a distance of nearly two million miles from Earth – this has never been tried before and to be honest, we’re not 100% sure it will work.
The VMC was originally designed to monitor the separation of the Beagle 2 lander and was turned off after launch. But it was revived for science and awareness in 2007 after the development of more sophisticated image processing techniques that made the relatively simple camera useful again.
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