Since December 2003, ESA's Mars Express has been studying the Red Planet with a special quest: to collect more evidence that water once flowed on the planet - and could well still be present. For nearly three years, the probeís instruments have delighted scientists and public alike, with breath-taking views of the planet ñ its mesas, volcanoes, calderas and numerous dry riverbeds.
Today's Exchange features Mars Express' successful search for water, before the spotlight will be on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which in many instances is a successor to Mars Express.
Focusing on the stereo camera HRSC, the MARSIS radar and the OMEGA sounder, the programme includes new 3-D animations and stills, plus soundbites by ESA's Gerhard Schwehm and Mars Express scientists Jean-Pierre Biebring (Paris), John Murray (Milton Keynes, UK) and Gerhard Neukum (Berlin) (English, French, German).
The script is online as a PDF file under http://television.esa.int/photos/EbS48380.pdf
A WMV preview file is online under http:

Mars Express : Water on Mars
10:00:30 A-Roll Start
10:00:40 Since its arrival in December 2003, Europeís first mission to Mars has been studying the composition of the atmosphere, mapping the surface and ñ a space première! ñ delving into the sub-surface of Earthís neighbour.
10:00:55 With one special quest for Mars Express: to find further evidence that water once flowed on the planet - and could well still be present.
10:01:04 For more than two and a half years, the spacecraftís seven instruments have delighted scientists and public alike, with breath-taking views of the planet ñ its mesas, volcanoes, calderas and numerous dry riverbeds.
10:01:19 The High Resolution Stereo Camera, HRSC, has delivered grandiose vistas on the Martian landscape ñ like the Martian grand canyon, Valles Marineris, but several thousand kilometres in long, and twice as deep as the one on Earth.
10:01:35 Clip Gerhard Neukum, HRSC Principal Investigator, Free University, Berlin ""All this has been for