Mars Express Sends Back First Photo of Mars

Andrew Browne writes "Today the European Space Agency received the first photo of Mars from its Mars Express probe. The photo was taken on December 1st and processed by the DLR Institute for Planetary Research and by the Freie Universitat Berlin. Mars Express was launched June 2nd of this year and is due to arrive at the Red planet later this month. The extremely speedy voyage is thanks to our close approach to Mars this summer. Other probes taking advantage of the launch window include NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers. You can track the progress of all the probes heading to Mars with NASA's solar system simulator."

Comments

Good chances to discover ET life in year 2004

[njchick]

The are good chances that the extraterrestrial life will be found in year 2004 if it exists in the Solar system. Mars will be inspected by three probes specifically designed to look for life. Also, Cassini will drop a probe on Titan, a moon of Saturn. It may not find bacteria, but if Titan is populated by macroscopic organisms, we'll know it in year 2004.

We'll have better chances only when a probe penetrates the ice crust of Europa.

Photo Types

[fven]

As they imply they will show a new photo each day until Christmas (Advent Calendar of photos), I hope they will produce some false colour images from the OMEGA and SPICAM instruments.
THe first two both look like images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which do look cool but I would like to see some of the atmospheric and mineralogic data as maps.

The color of Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting article on the color of Mars.

Re:Tiny ... very tiny.

[greenhide]

Venus is perfectly habitable; the government wants you to believe that it's not.

Yeah, yeah, I want to believe.