Written by Amira Shehata Friday, July 21, 2023 06:00 AM Picked up Mars orbiter The European Space Agency (ESA) captured an extremely rare snapshot of the Earth and Moon on Mars, obtained during its orbit around the Red Planet.
According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, the scene was captured by the Mars Express vehicle that has been monitoring the distant world for 20 years to discover groundwater that could lead to finding signs of life.
Earth and Moon from Mars
Some features appear in the image, where the white dot is the Earth, and the faint dot is the Moon.
“In this simple snapshot from Mars Express, Earth has the equivalent size as an ant seen from 100 meters away, and we’re all there,” said Jorge Hernandez Bernal, a Mars Express team member.
Bernal added that the footage is a series of images captured by the Super-Resolution Channel (SRC) of Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which is primarily used to observe the Martian moons and stars.
Earth from Mars
The Earth and its moon appear on May 15, 21, 27, and June 2, 2023, and the last shot shows more than half of the moon’s monthly orbit around the Earth. The June snapshot was taken on the twentieth anniversary of the launch of Mars Express to the Red Planet.
The rover is a cube about five feet by six feet with two 60-foot radar antennas, which visualizes the entire Martian surface in high resolution, produces a detailed color map of surface minerals, maps the atmosphere and probes below the surface with radar.
