Mars Express has been orbiting Mars for the past 20 years, sending back data on the vast landscape of the Red Planet along the way. Slight technical delays have hampered these views, and sometimes the images take hours and even days to transmit to Earth.
[Related: The Mars Express just got up close and personal with Phobos.]
That changes with today’s historic livestream. If all goes according to plan, today’s images will get to Earth about 18 minutes after they are taken. It will take 17 minutes for light to travel from Mars to Earth and then about one minute to pass through the servers and wires on the ground.
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