On June 3, the European Space Agency (ESA) will conduct its first live-stream from Mars with the Mars Express spacecraft to celebrate the 20th anniversary of launch.
On June 2, 2003, the Soyuz-FG/Fregat rocket launched the spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The mission of the ship is to send 3D images of the surface of Mars to Earth to help experts observe more details about this planet.
The livestream takes place for about an hour on ESA’s YouTube channel, which can be watched by interested people around the world. However, new images will not be streamed continuously, but are transmitted every 50 seconds.
According to the ESA, spacecraft often record observations and data when not directly connected to Earth. The images are then stored until they can be sent back. The process of transmitting data between Mars and Earth can take from 3 to 22 minutes, depending on the position of the two planets in orbit around the Sun.
During tonight’s livestream, it is expected that the time from when the image is taken from the orbit of Mars until it appears on the viewer’s screen is about 18 minutes including 17 minutes for light to travel from Mars to Earth and the remaining time for transmission through the wires and servers on the ground.
ESA shared, the livestream from Mars has never been done before, so they are not really sure about the exact time for the signals to travel on the ground.
