One of NASA's Mars rovers has sent pictures relayed by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter for the first time, demonstrating that the orbiter could serve as a communications link if needed.

The link-up was part of a set of interplanetary networking demonstrations paving the way for future Mars missions to rely on these networking capabilities. The American and European agencies planned them as part of continuing efforts to cooperate in space exploration. On Aug. 4, as Mars Express flew over NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, the orbiter received data previously collected and stored by the rover. The data, including 15 ../../../images from the rover's nine cameras, were subsequently forwarded to the European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany, and relayed to the rover team based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

This false-color picture inside "Endurance Crater" taken by Opportunity with its panoramic camerais one of the ../../../images transmitted to the Mars Express orbiter, which relayed them to Earth.

One of the instruments on Mars Express, ASPERA-3, is a Discovery Mission of Opportunity. It is acquiring many observations as it identifies the solar wind interaction with the upper atmosphere and measures the properties of the planetary wind in the Mars tail.

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