3 July

2003: On 3 July 2003, ESA's Mars Express spacecraft sent images of a unique view of Earth and the Moon. It was one of the first data sets coming from ESA's Mars Express.

The views of the Earth/Moon system were taken by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), when the spacecraft was 8 million kilometres from Earth. The image taken shows true colours; the Pacific Ocean appears in blue, and the clouds near the Equator and in mid to northern latitudes in white to light grey. It was built by combining a super resolution black and white HRSC image of the Earth and the Moon with colour information obtained by the blue, green and red sensors of the instrument.