Our colleague Thomas Ormston, who leads VMC activities for the Mars Express team here at ESOC, recently presented a paper at the 61st International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Prague, Czech Republic.

The paper, "An Ordinary Camera In An Extraordinary Location: Outreach With The Mars Webcam," covered the history of the VMC project and provided details on camera operations and our results to date in publishing results to this blog. It also described the outreach successes of the project, highlighted some of the contributions from the Mars Webcam community, explained opportunities to use and work with the Mars Webcam and plans for future camera activities.

The paper was the product of a joint effort and made use of input from the entire Mars Express team (thanks guys!) - it's an excellent review of VMC activities to date. You can access a copy in SlideShare.net or click on 'Full story' below.

We'd like to thank everyone who attended Thomas' presentation at IAC and, in particular, we'd like to give a big shout out to Beth Beck, who posted the following note in her blog:

"My fav presentation was European Space Agency's Mars WebCam project. You'll just have to check it out. The best example of 'participatory exploration' that I've seen. They turned an unused mission camera back on to take photos of Mars. They offer the data to the public to process. The Mars WebCam folks post the "processed" images back on their site. Quite wonderful. They've created an amazing, enthusiastic community of Mars-watchers, who participate in the mission voluntarily with hundreds of hours of processing time to their credit."

Thanks, Beth, for your kind words! -- Daniel

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ESA's J. Landeau-Constantin, Head of the EAC/ESOC Corporate Communication Office, explains the VMC (Mars Webcam) outreach project (that's us!) at today's "Public Outreach in Astronomy" workshop, part of the annual meeting of the German astronomy societies in Bonn.

In the image, M. Pössel chairs, while G. Schönherr works on her talk about the IYA in Germany. Twitpic credit: Daniel Fischer (cosmos4u) -- Daniel

The Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) is mounted on Mars Express, ESA's deep-space probe now orbiting the Red Planet. It originally provided simple, low-tech photos of the Beagle lander separation, and is now back in action as the 'Mars Webcam'. It's not a scientific instrument, but it does provide fantastic images of Mars - including crescent views of the planet not obtainable from Earth. Full story »

FAQ developed by the VMC team at ESOC. Please read below before contacting us, as we will regularly update responses to the most common questions here. Scroll down for general specifications and contact information; the links on the right give more technical information about the VMC and its use and history on Mars Express.

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Welcome to the Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera Blog!

This blog is operated by ESA - the European Space Agency - as an unofficial and in-depth source of information for the general public (important information and disclaimer).

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