The European Space Agency’s Mars orbiter celebrated its 20th anniversary since launch by snapping pictures of Earth from Mars.
While it may not be the most detailed picture of the Earth from space, it puts into perspective how tiny our planet seems when you’re not on it.
‘In these simple snapshots from Mars Express, Earth has the equivalent size as an ant seen from a distance of 100 metres, and we are all in there,’ said Jorge Hernández Bernal who is part of the Mars Express team that initiated the image.
‘Even though we have seen images like these before, it is still humbling to pause and think: we need to look after the pale blue dot, there is no planet B.’
Bernal said that they wanted to bring the reflections of Carl Sagan back to the present day at a time of ‘worsening climate and ecological crisis’.
The Earth was described as a ‘pale blue dot’ by scientist Carl Sagan, inspired by a 1990 image captured by Nasa’s Voyager 1 as it looked back towards Earth.
The image moved Sagan to make his famous speech, reflecting on Earth as the only world known so far to harbour life and highlighting our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to take care to preserve our home planet.
More than three decades have passed since that iconic image was taken, during which time numerous space probes have taken pictures of the Earth from space.
This sequence of images was acquired by the super resolution channel (SRC) of Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which is primarily used for observing Mars’s two moons and the stars.
They show the Earth and its moon on May 15, 21 and 27, and June 2 2023, spanning more than half of the Moon’s monthly orbit around Earth.
The final image in the sequence marked the anniversary of the launch of Mars Express on June 2, 2003.
It was taken shortly before a special anniversary event during which images of Mars taken by the spacecraft’s Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) were beamed ‘live’ back to Earth in a first-of-its-kind broadcast.
‘There is no scientific value in these images, but since the conditions allowed us to point the HRSC to Earth and shortly after the VMC to Mars, we took the opportunity to create our own portrait of home on this incredible mission milestone for Mars Express,’ says Daniela Tirsch, member of the Mars Express HRSC team.
The very first planetary image taken by the mission 20 years ago was also of the Earth and Moon.
On the night of 3 July 2003, the spacecraft was pointed backwards to obtain a breathtaking view of our planet and moon from a distance of just 4.9 million miles while on its way to Mars. In comparison, the 2023 images were taken from around 186 million miles.
‘Perhaps it will only be another 20 years before humans can look up from the surface of Mars to see Earth in the night sky,’ adds Colin Wilson, ESA project scientist for Mars Express.
We already have people training for how to live on Mars and Elon Musk’s SpaceX working on the world’s most powerful rocket as part of its long-term goal of sending humans to Mars.
MORE : A message from Mars: Nasa rover says ‘don’t worry’ after dramatic damage
MORE : Nasa Perseverance rover finds possible signs of alien life on Mars
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