Posted by Heba El-Sayed

Tuesday, July 18, 2023 04:00 am

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, which has been studying Mars from above for two decades, has captured a stark view of our planet and our moon from millions of miles away.

“In this simple snapshot of Mars Express, the size of an ant as seen by Earth from 100 meters away, we are all there,” Jorge Hernandez Bernal, a planetary scientist working on the orbiter, said in a statement.

The view you see of the Moon orbiting Earth from 186 million miles (300 million kilometers) away is similar to what you would see if you stood on Mars with binoculars and looked at Earth.

For decades, this study has rewarded researchers with insights into Mars, finding evidence that Mars was, in its history, a watery, blue world (although it is unknown whether Mars ever harbored primitive life). .

The European Space Agency said: “Key findings include the presence of minerals that can only form in the presence of water, the discovery of subsurface water ice deposits and evidence that volcanoes on Mars may have existed until recently.”