First live broadcast from Mars – a rare real-time look at space – ESA

But on Friday afternoon European Space Agency (The European Space Agency) offered the closest thing: the first ever live broadcast of Mars on YouTube, which posted images of the planet every 50 seconds as they were transmitted directly from the camera on the agency’s Mars Express Orbiter spacecraft. The live broadcast lasted about an hour.

“Normally, we see pictures from Mars and we know they were taken days ago. I’m excited to see Mars as it is now — as close to Mars ‘now’ as we can get!” said James Godfrey, spacecraft operations manager at the agency’s Mission Control Center. European space.

At 50-second intervals, the camera panned across Mars, showing one side of the planet entering night, as well as some clouds visible in the corner. The live broadcast celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Mars Express mission, which was launched in 2003 to better understand the planet, as well as search for traces of water.

There are only a few examples of “live” content from space, including the famous Apollo missions that show astronauts walking on the surface of the Moon, as well as the DART and LCROSS missions, where NASA deliberately dropped spacecraft on asteroids and the Moon, although respectively, the European Space Agency said in a press release.

“All of these missions have been fairly close to home, and some have sent back perhaps an image or two in almost real time,” the European Space Agency said. “When it comes to a long live broadcast from deep space, this is a first.”

Most of the observations and data collected by spacecraft are sent back to Earth after a few hours or even days – which is generally not a problem for scientists.

Indeed, while the speed of light can make live streaming difficult, in other cases it has been a boon for scientific discovery.

An example of this is Euclid’s task. The European Space Agency said the telescope will record light that was traveling 10 billion years ago, allowing scientists to see 10 billion years into the past.