If you are like me, you probably had never heard of the European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express satellite. (Perhaps you have never heard of the ESA, which is a European consortium for space science exploration, similar to NASA in the USA). You may vaguely recall that this mission to Mars set off in June, 2003 aboard a Russian Soyuz/Fregat launch vehicle. The mission carried the ill-fated Beagle 2 Mars lander, which was destroyed upon entry into the Martian atmosphere. A number of causes, ranging from the failed deployment of its airbags to tangled parachute lines have been offered to explain the mission failure.

The post-mortem on the Beagle 2 makes NASA look transparent by comparison. While a joint BNSC/ESA investigation team concluded that the loss of Britain's Beagle 2 Mars lander was caused in part by poor management of the overall project, Beagle 2 Lead Scientist Colin Pillinger refuted those suggestions. Instead, Pillinger praised everyone in the team, including the scientists and engineers who carried out the design, building and testing; the mission and industrial project managers who over saw the process; and the senior management, he said it was time to "move on". [Quickly, I guess before anyone asks too many questions.] The Planetary Society web page reports: "Although those two entities jointly issued a set of recommendations, the [full] report of that investigation was sealed to all except those with a need to know." [Editor's note: the full report was finally released on 3 February, 2005.]

While the Beagle 2 may have been a failure, the overall mission was not. This is because the mission also carried the Mars Express orbiter. Mars Express did not just salvage the mission, it has defined it. Rather than scratching through Martian rock-dust looking for evidence of "life", Mars Express has instead accomplished something useful. Namely, it has returned stunningly spectacular visible spectrum imagery of the Martian surface. Imagery that conveys a sense of wonder and awe regarding God's creation that none of the "evidence" of Martian "life" has to-date accomplished. This imagery is available at the ESA Website , with almost 200 photos, anaglyphs and DEM renderings currently listed.

In addition to the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HSRC), the Mars Explorer also carries other important instruments, including the OMEGA Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer; the SPICAM Ultraviolet and Infrared Atmospheric Spectrometer; the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS); the ASPERA Energetic Neutral Atoms Analyzer; Mars Radio Science Experiment (MaRS); and the MARSIS Sub-Surface Sounding Radar Altimeter.

The importance of this imagery is that it allows the lay person and amateur planetary geologist to personally inspect some high-quality Mars data and cut through the embarrassing life-hype of modern Martian exploration. We are told for example by some "experts" that vast oceans once existed on Mars and life was probably plentiful. But the Martian atmosphere is extremely thin, only 1/100 as dense as the atmosphere on earth. It is composed mainly of carbon dioxide (95.3%), nitrogen (2.7%), and argon (1.6%), with virtually no oxygen and little water vapor. Water ice is not plentiful on the Martian surface. Surface temperatures range from a high of 0C on the equator to -113C at the poles Where did all these vast oceans teeming with life go to? What did this life breathe? Where is the fossil record of this life in the Martian surface? And why do the images presented by the Mars Rover depict some of the most desolate (albeit breathtakingly beautiful) landscapes conceivable? (See images to the right.) Careful study of the imagery can allow interested observers to draw their own conclusions, at least concerning the consistency of the Martian water theory with the geological record. (Hint: be prepared to look very hard for supporting evidence.)

The Mars Express Imagery pages hold 190 high-resolution (-50m/pixel) images of the Martian surface. As far as I know, it is the largest collection of such images available to the general public. The collection contains planimetric, perspective (draped DEMs), and 3D anaglyph views of the surface. Many of them are multiple views of a single feature of interest. Each is accompanied by a description of the accompanying scene. The images may be down loaded and used within the restrictions listed on the web site, which mainly require appropriate crediting of the ESA. Unfortunately, while a significant number of images are available at the web site, neither the source data nor data from any of the other instruments carried aboard the explorer seems to be available. Most important to students of Martian geology and topography would be the digital elevation model data produced by the HSRC and the spectra produced by the OMEGA instrument. Hopefully this data will become freely available in the future as it presently has little commercial value.

Regardless of your view on the question of life on Mars, you will probably agree that the ESA images give a new perspective on the planet, much as the first Land Sat images did for planet Earth. They present Mars as a fascinating and worthy object of scientific study. One that merits careful geological analysis for its own sake, not just to support tenuous assertions regarding Martian biology.