Mars Express 'Webcam' Catches Crescent Mars

Mars Express 'Webcam' Catches Crescent Mars

Mars Express 'Webcam' Catches Crescent Mars


On Friday, the European Space Agency released a beautiful image of a crescent Mars from their new celestial webcam.

The webcam's real job on board ESA's Mars Express orbiter was to confirm the separation of the Beagle 2 lander from the Mars Express orbiter in 2003. After that it was dormant until last fall when flight controllers decided to use it to allow people back home to ride along. Now the system is up and running and ESA has just launched a website where you can check out images from their new marscam.

The camera does not have pointing or focusing capabilities and it can only be run when it won't be interfering with regular science activities. But it is still a cool development, and the flight controllers have been getting better at using it since they first turned it back on. Back then the images were mostly just the inky blackness of space or very blurry. Now they have released some of their "best of" shots from the past year and hope to post a new image every few days.

The only difference between this camera and your own PC's webcam is this one has been special qualified to function in space. It is "an ordinary camera in an extraordinary location," according to the website.

Other Mars cameras, like the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are uploading beautiful, hi-res, color pictures of the surface features of Mars on a regular basis, but these are taken less than 300 km from Mars, very close up. ESA's marscam offers views of the whole planet from the farthest point of Mars Express' orbit, some 10,000 km away from Mars.

Viking_mars_crescent_2Because Mars' orbit is farther from the sun than Earth's, we can't see a crescent Mars from home (Mars would have to be between the sun and the Earth to get a crescent view from here and it never does that). We can see crescents of Venus and Mercury because they orbit closer to the sun. However, probes that venture out to Mars or beyond can get a shot of the Mars crescent, such as this one from the early Viking days (left). I also saw one from an early Russian probe, but could not find any others. Not even on the new site.

If anyone knows of any other crescent Mars images, please give a shout.

Mars Webcam [ESA]

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Images courtesy ESA and NASA