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Best video of Mars EVER as mind-blowing 4K Nasa footage from surface of red planet revealed
INCREDIBLE images captured from the surface of Mars have been remastered in stunning 4K by genius space fans.
Images snapped by Nasa rovers on the Red Planet were tuned up by tech buffs and posted online as a ten-minute video "journey" across Mars.
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Uploaded by UK YouTube channel ElderFox Documentaries, has racked up more than two millions views since it was uploaded on July 17.
The unnamed team behind the channel used publicly available images to cut together close to 20 mosaics, including what they claim is the “largest ever put together” of the Martian surface.
"The images in this video are all real. They were captured by Nasa's Mars rovers directly from the surface of the planet," the video's narrator says.
"This is the first time Martian footage has been rendered in stunning 4K resolution."
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All of the images were captured by the three Nasa Mars rovers: Spirit, Curiosity and Opportunity.
Of those interplanetary machines, only one – Curiosity – still trundles the Martian surface today.
Each rover has a treasure trove of images that are freely available on Nasa's website. It's these images that ElderFox used for their video.
The team stitched together thousands of images to create panoramas that, when panned across, create the feeling of a live video feed.
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The video's narrator calls it "the most lifelike experience of being on Mars".
One snap of an area know as Glen Torridon is made up of more than 1,000 images take by Curiosity between November 24 and December 1, 2019.
ElderFox claim it is the largest mosaic of the Martian surface ever created. It contains 1.8billion pixels.
Although the cameras on each rover were top-of-the-range at launch, there is no live footage from Mars.
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The narrator explains in the video that this is due to the sluggish rate at which the rovers send data back to earth.
"Curiosity can only send data directly back to earth at 32 kilo-bits per second,"; he says.
"Instead, when the rover can connect to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, we get more favourable speeds of 2 Megabytes per second."
The narrator adds: "However, this link is only available for about 8 minutes each Sol, or Martian day.
"Sending HD video at these speeds would take a long long time. As nothing really moves on Mars, it makes more sense to take and send back images."
Spirit (2004-2010), Opportunity (2004-2019) and Curiosity (2012-today) were launched by Nasa to search for past or present signs of alien life.
The rovers have found evidence of water at the Martian surface and that ancient Mars had the right chemistry to support living microbes.
The hunt for the existence of life on the planet today continues.
Mars facts
Here's what you need to know about the Red Planet...
- Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun
- It is named after the Roman god of war
- The landmass of Mars is very similar to Earth but due to the difference in gravity you could jump three times higher there than you can here
- Mars is mountainous and hosts the tallest mountain known in the Solar System called Olympus Mons, which is three times higher than Everest
- Mars is considered to be the second most habitable planet after Earth
- It takes the planet 687 Earth days to orbit the Sun
- So far, there has been 39 missions to Mars but only 16 of these have been successful
Most read in Science
In other news, mind-blowing photos of the Martian surface were published by Nasa in May.
It recently emerged that the US military is developing a secretive network of spy satellites that will one day blanket Earth's orbit.
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Brits took stunning snaps of Starlink satellites passing over the UK in April.
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