We're renovating!

As the Mars Express team works to recommission the VMC camera, we're taking advantage of the pause to transfer the VMC blog to the new Wordpress platform. Effective immediately, all news, updates and information -- not to mention new VMC images -- will be published via http://blogs.esa.int/vmc.

For now, the VMC image archives will remain searchable and available via this site; if we transfer them anywhere, we'll let you know.

 

 

 

 

Some nice news today for VMC fans: the teams at ESOC are getting closer to restoring the VMC back to operation. Imaging stopped, of course, with last autumn's anomaly, the solution of which has kept everyone in the MEX family fully occupied for several months. VMC, being last priority, was not worked on. But we're hopeful that we'll get a solution soon, and we'll post news here as soon as we hear anything.

References to our very own VMC camera activities highlighted - and note very nice comments on teamwork! Click link to read the full report.

While full science operations have now been resumed, a number of tasks remain to be completed. Most important among these is the implementation of an OBCP scheduler. This will enable the spacecraft to operate autonomously for up to a week, compared to the few days that are possible with the current FAST system. Work is also in hand to resume operation of the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC – the 'Mars webcam').

Enormous team effort

Completely redesigning the way in which Mars Express is controlled has involved an enormous amount of work for the mission control team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), assisted by their counterparts at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), PI-teams, other ESA experts and partners in industry. Everyone involved with the mission is extremely grateful for their hard work.

Although the 'Express' in Mars Express highlights that the mission was developed in a short time and with a relatively modest budget, the ability to resume full operations after a very serious failure shows that the resulting design is both robust and flexible.

Mars Express has now been restored to full operational capability and its potential mission lifetime remains unchanged

Full report via ESA Science & Technology

This paper discusses the possibilities for using the non-scientific Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) to contribute to this scientific objective of the Mars Express mission, complementing and supporting the data obtained from the scientific payload. The contribution of VMC is that it can image the planet with a large field of view, providing the context for the other experiments which operate at lower altitudes, close to the pericenter. The VMC data would also allow providing useful information such as cloud altitude (thanks to the shadow) morphology, relative reflectivity and dynamics. These are important parameters in the characterization of the CO2 cloud population.

 

Link to presentation at EPSC-DPS 2011, Nantes, France

New images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 14 October 2011, for more details on this observation hit the "Full Story" link below. To access the images click the link below. Also you can access the Celestia file to see where the images were captured and access the raw data in the zip file (for more details see Help us with the VMC)

 Full story »

New images have been posted to the image database. These images are from the VMC observation on 12 October 2011, for more details on this observation hit the "Full Story" link below. To access the images click the link below. Also you can access the Celestia file to see where the images were captured and access the raw data in the zip file (for more details see Help us with the VMC)

 Full story »