Mars footage set to be streamed TODAY – here’s how to watch
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Mars as you’ve never seen it before: ‘Live’ footage of the Red Planet streams TODAY – here’s how you can watch
No human has ever set foot on Mars, despite our hopes of doing so in the near future.
Now we’ll see Mars “live” for the first time as images are streamed in near real-time from the surface of the Red Planet, straight to YouTube.
Mars has only been seen before in the past, through images from orbiters and landers exploring it, usually days after the images were taken.
But to celebrate the 20th anniversary of ESA’s Mars Express space probe orbiting the Red Planet, experts have spent weeks developing tools that allow live streaming of images from the probe’s camera for an hour.
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun – a dusty, cold desert world with a thin atmosphere. For the first time, we will see Mars “live” as images are streamed directly to YouTube from the surface of the Red Planet in near real time. Pictured is Mars captured by the Hubble telescope
New photos are beamed down approximately every 50 seconds, starting around 5pm UK time.
The Visual Monitoring Camera on Mars Express has previously detected the evolution of a rare elongated cloud formation hovering above one of Mars’ most famous volcanoes – the 20 km high Arsia Mons.
“This is an old camera, originally intended for engineering purposes, at a distance of nearly three million kilometers from Earth,” said James Godfrey, Spacecraft Operations Manager at ESA’s Mission Control Center in Darmstadt, Germany.
“This hasn’t been tried before and to be honest, we’re not 100 percent sure it will work.
“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 we can get!”
Due to the enormous distance between the Earth and Mars – about 220 million kilometers on average – there will even be a small delay in the transmission.
During the hour-long live stream on Friday, the time between the images being captured from orbit around Mars and appearing on screen will be approximately 18 minutes.
ESA said: ‘That’s 17 minutes for light to travel from Mars to Earth in their current configuration, and about a minute to go through the wires and servers on the ground.’
On Friday, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of ESA’s Mars Express (pictured here), you’ll have the chance to get as close as possible to Mars
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.
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: the base
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, with an “almost dead” dusty, cold desert world with a very thin atmosphere.
Mars is also a dynamic planet with seasons, polar ice caps, canyons, extinct volcanoes and evidence that Mars was even more active in the past.
It is one of the most researched planets in the solar system and the only planet humans have sent to explore.
This image, taken by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, shows a close-up view of the wavy structures on Mars
A day on Mars lasts just over 24 hours and a year is 687 Earth days.
Facts and numbers
Orbit time: 687 days
Surface: 55.91 million mi²
Distance to sun: 145 million miles
Gravity: 3,721 m/s²
Ray: 2,106 miles
Mane: Phobos, Deimos