On June 2, 2023, when the first livestream of Mars started, the red planet looked a bit like a blurry peanut butter cookie.
Every 48 seconds, a new image beamed from the humble Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) attached to the Mars Express orbiter. Better described as a security camera than a scientific instrument, the VMC was originally attached to the probe to keep an eye on the detachable Beagle-2 lander (which went missing on Mars in 2003).
The VMC “was there for one reason,” Simon Wood, an engineer who works on Mars Express and one of the livestream’s panelists, said during the livestream.
After Beagle-2 and Mars Express parted ways, the flight control team turned off the camera and left it that way for several years. When they turned it back on a few years ago, they found the same fuzzy camera as before, but the images had charm. The ...
