First-ever live stream of Mars is set for TOMORROW

The European Space Agency (ESA) is hosting the first-ever live stream from Mars that should reveal never-before-seen stunning details of the Red Planet.

The agency’s Mars Express orbiter will share new images every 50 seconds Friday at 11:45 a.m. ET as it hovers more than 11,000 miles above the surface of Mars.

And the stream will be accessible through the ESA YouTube channel.

Although the event is being held live, it takes up to 22 minutes for data to travel the more than 300 million kilometers from Mars to Earth.

There are only a few historical examples where people on Earth have seen live images or video from space, including NASA’s DART mission crashing a probe into a moonlet and the Apollo missions.

ESA said the live stream honors the 20th year of Mars Express in space.

Mars Express, so named for its fast and streamlined development time, represents the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first visit to another planet in the solar system.

Launched in 2003, the spacecraft borrowed technology from ESA’s Rosetta and Mars 96 missions.

Since science operations began in 2004, the durable orbiter has given scientists a whole new look at Earth’s intriguing neighbor.

It now helps answer fundamental questions about the geology, atmosphere, surface environment, history of water and potential for life on Mars.

Mars Express, so named for its fast and streamlined development time, represents the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first visit to another planet in the solar system.

Launched in 2003, the spacecraft borrowed technology from ESA’s Rosetta mission and the Mars 96 mission.

Since science operations began in 2004, the durable orbiter has given scientists a whole new look at Earth’s intriguing neighbor.

It now helps answer fundamental questions about the geology, atmosphere, surface environment, history of water and potential for life on Mars.

The spacecraft’s high-resolution camera has returned thousands of dramatic 3D views of the Martian surface.

One 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 subsurface layers of water ice.

The agency’s Mars Express orbiter will share new images every 50 seconds Friday at 11:45 a.m. ET as it hovers more than 11,000 miles above the surface of Mars

Another instrument detected enough ice in the polar caps to create a global ocean 10 meters deep, revealing vast permafrost plains around the South Pole.

Mars Express found the highest clouds above any planetary surface at 100 kilometers.

The mission found evidence of the possible presence of methane, which has been attributed to active volcanism and biochemical processes on Earth.

Its highly elliptical orbit has enabled the spacecraft to look beyond Mars to examine its two small moons, particularly the inner satellite Phobos, which has been studied in unprecedented detail.

It has served as a communications relay between Earth and several NASA spacecraft, including the Phoenix lander and several surface rovers.

“The Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera, also known as the Mars Webcam, was not planned to break such a record,” ESA shared in a statement.

Its primary task, 20 years ago, was to monitor the separation of the Beagle 2 lander from the ‘MEX’ spacecraft. Once it did that and reported back, it turned off.

“Like the surveillance cameras on board ESA’s Juice spacecraft, which send back images of instruments and solar panels being deployed, it was not intended to be a scientific tool.

“It didn’t have to create exactly accurate images. And yet we are here.’

To celebrate the long and productive life of Mars Express, teams have spent the past few months developing tools to live stream the high-quality, scientifically processed images for an 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 nearly three million kilometers from Earth. Honestly, we’re not 100% sure it works.

“But I’m quite optimistic. Normally, we see images of Mars and know that they were taken days earlier. I’m excited to see Mars as it is now – as close to a Mars ‘now’ as it gets!’