ESA
MEX Spacecraft Operations
"ORDINARY CAMERA, EXTRAORDINARY PLACES" is a very interesting profile article in the latest ESA Bulletin covering several of the VMC cameras on board ESA's fleet - including, of course, our very own 'Mars Webcam' on Mars Express:
On 10 December 1999, XMM-Newton was launched on the Ariane 504 flight. About five hours after launch, the cameras took pictures of the left and the right solar array assemblies. The cameras confirmed information about the status of the solar array deployment, achieving their primary objective.
The article provides excellent background information not only on our Mars Express VMC, but also on the VMCs used on XMM-Newton, Cluster and other ESA missions, detailing their technology, usages and image results. Well worth a read for any VMC fans... like us! :-)
In a related link, you can see an excellent image sequence taken by the Herschel VMC, which was used to capture images of the the Planck-Sylda (satellite-and-support composite) falling away during Herschel separation just after the dual launch on 14 May 2009.
