20 Years Ago ESA’s Mars Express Spacecraft Took It’s First Image Of The Earth-Moon System

On the evening of July 3, 2003, twenty years ago, the Mars Express spacecraft of the European Space Agency was aimed backwards to capture this spectacular image of the Earth-Moon system from a distance of eight million kilometers.

The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) captured this photograph as the mission's first image of a planetary object. Even though the spatial resolution was poor at such a large distance, the image provided a useful preview of Mars Express's orbit around Mars.

The camera is still functioning well today after more than 24 000 orbits around the Red Planet and is still imaging Mars in color and stereo!

Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin