How do the Mars Express HRSC pictures get back to Earth?
Before the HRSC team can lay their hands on the pictures, the data have to make the long journey back home. After the pictures are taken and stored on board Mars Express, the data is transmitted to ESA’s New Norcia Station in Australia, or to NASA’s Deep Space Network Station in Madrid. From there, the data are collected at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) at Darmstadt in Germany. They are then transmitted to the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR) in Berlin, where most of them will be processed into the pictures we see.
