Planet Mars from 5.5 million kilometres away. Credit: ESA

This picture (copyright ESA) was taken on December 1, 2003 from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) under the responsibility of the Principal Investigator Prof. Gerhard Neukum. It was processed by the DLR Institute for Planetary Research, also involved in the development of the camera, and by the Freie Universitat Berlin.

This picture shows planet Mars as seen from a distance of about 5.5 million kilometres. This is a very unusual view of Mars because the planet is illuminated in a way never seen from Earth. The sun shines on part of the western hemisphere, but more than a third of the Martian disc lies in the dark. The dark features at the top are part of the northern lowlands of Mars, where oceans possibly existed thousands of millions of years ago.

ESA's Mars Express probe is scheduled to arrive at Mars at Christmas: the Beagle 2 lander is expected to touch down on the surface of the Red Planet on the night of December 24 to 25.

Launched on June 2, 2003 from Baikonur (Kazakhstan) on board a Russian Soyuz launcher operated by Starsem, the European probe -- built for ESA by a European team of industrial companies led by Astrium -- carries seven scientific instruments that will perform a series of remote-sensing experiments designed to shed new light on the Martian atmosphere, the planet's structure and its geology. In particular, the British-made Beagle 2 lander, named after the ship on which Charles Darwin explored uncharted areas of the Earth in 1830, will contribute to the search for traces of life on Mars through exobiology experiments and geochemistry research.

On Christmas Eve the Mars Express orbiter will be steered on a course taking it into an elliptical orbit, where it will safely circle the planet for a minimum of almost 2 Earth years. The Beagle 2 lander -- which will have been released from the mother craft a few days earlier (on 19 December) -- instead will stay on a collision course with the planet. It too should also be safe, being designed for atmospheric entry and geared for a final soft landing due to a sophisticated system of parachutes and airbags.

On arrival, the Mars Express mission control team will report on the outcome of the spacecraft's delicate orbital insertion manoeuvre. It will take some time for Mars Express to manouvre into position to pick communications from Beagle 2. Hence, initially, other means will be used to check that Beagle 2 has landed: first signals from the Beagle 2 landing are expected to be available throughout Christmas Day, either through pick-up and relay of Beagle 2 radio signals by NASA's Mars Odyssey, or by direct pick-up by the Jodrell Bank radio telescope in the UK.

Mars Express will then pass over Beagle 2 in early January 2004, relaying data and images back to Earth. The first images from the cameras of Beagle 2 and Mars Express are expected to be available between the end of the year and the beginning of January 2004.