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Mars Express Makes First Photo of Red Planet
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 08:15 am ET
03 December 2003
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The European Space Agency's Mars Express has taken its first picture of the red planet as it gears up for arrival later this month
The European Space Agency's Mars Express has taken its first picture of the red planet as it gears up for arrival later this month.
The photograph was taken by the probe's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) Dec. 1 and released today. It shows Mars from about 3.4 million miles (5.5 million kilometers) away. It is a very unusual view of Mars, ESA scientists said, because the planet is illuminated in a way never seen from Earth. The Sun shines on part of the western hemisphere, but more than a third of the Martian disk lies in the dark. The dark features at the top are part of the northern lowlands of Mars, where oceans might have existed billions of years ago. The resolution of the image is not the sort that can be obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope or other spacecraft orbiting Mars. But it shows that the Mars Express camera is ready for future tasks. The robotic craft will reach Mars at Christmastime and deploy its Beagle 2 lander to the surface. NASA, meanwhile, has two surface rovers en route to Mars, due to arrive in January.
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