While everyone’s talking about Star Wars, NASA has released images of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft taken by the Mars Global Surveyor – the first time a satellite has captured an image of another in orbit of another planet.
What’s interesting is that the two satellites are in nearly identical orbits, and sometimes come as close as 15km to each other — which in orbital terms is exceptionally close. It’s amazing how NASA can take a small craft with limited fuel, get it into the orbit of another planet (no mean feat in itself) and have it actually capture an image of another satellite in orbit of that planet. As cool as Star Wars is, it doesn’t compare to the real thing…
