Mars Express looks at its target

By Helen Briggs
BBC News Online

Mars Express is approaching its destination. (Image: copyright Esa).

Enlarge Image

Europe's first solo mission to another planet, Mars Express, has taken its first image of the Red Planet.

The picture was captured when the probe was about 5.5 million kilometres away.

Mars Express is nearing its destination after a six-month voyage from Earth and is due to go into orbit around the fourth planet on Christmas Day.

By then, it will have released the tiny British lander, Beagle 2, which will drop down on to the surface of Mars to look for signs of past or present life.

Novel perspective

The European Space Agency orbiter gives a perspective on Mars quite different from those captured by Earth-bound telescopes.

To have a first image of Mars is a historic moment Professor Gerhard Neukum

The dark areas at the top of the planet are part of the northern lowlands of Mars.

The terrain is pitted with huge boulders, volcanic deposits and wind-blown dust sculptures. Oceans may have existed here thousands of millions of years ago.

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board Mars Express took the picture.

The first dedicated stereo camera to have flown on a planetary mission, it will study the entire planet in unprecedented detail, taking full colour images in 3D.

The HRSC science team is led by Principal Investigator, Professor Gerhard Neukum, of the Free University of Berlin, Germany.

Professor Neukum and other members of the Mars Express team presented details of the mission on Wednesday at a news conference at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

'Historic moment'

In a telephone interview with BBC News Online, Prof Neukum said the picture of Mars taken on 1 December confirmed that the camera was in good shape.

The camera system should be able to spot Beagle 2

"To have a first image of Mars is a historic moment," he said. "What is fantastic is that the camera works and gives us a good picture."

One of the first tasks of the camera system will be to pinpoint the location of Beagle 2 on the Martian surface.

The tiny spacecraft, less than a metre across, is heading for Isidis Planitia, a flattish basin that straddles the northern lowlands and southern highlands of the planet.

The HRSC will also zoom in on Nasa's Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, which is due to land on the Gusev crater in the southern highlands on 4 January.

Face on Mars

As well as carrying out serious science, Prof Neukum hopes the instrument will lay to rest a long-held conspiracy theory about the famous "face" on Mars.

A face or a rocky outcrop?

The US space agency (Nasa) has sent many of its probes to image the rocky outcrop in an attempt to quell speculation that it was carved by an alien civilisation.

Most scientists believe it is a ruined mountain which just happens to look like a human face.

But some refuse to accept this verdict, as Prof Neukum's mailbag confirms.

"I have been bombarded by e-mails from all over the world saying: 'Please image that, Nasa is lying!" he said.

Mars Express will be sent to image the "face", to shed light on the matter, at some point in the mission.