Why No Videos From Mars

Knowledge only ever grows with increasingly better technology in our hands. A century ago taking a photograph on Earth was a huge production. Fifty years ago any amateur could handle an automatic camera and in the last decade even children are able to take digital images with great ease.

This improvement in technology also carried forward into the space exploration front. With the different photographs that Mars based rovers such as Curiosity have been sending back to Earth, we have a fairly good idea of what the Martian terrain looks like.

One question that may pop up is how come when we can get such brilliant images from Mars do we not have any interesting video clips? The radio wavelength that is currently used to transmit data is not enough to handle the larger data amounts that a video would require.

Currently scientists are experimenting with infra red communication which will allow higher rates of data exchange. Perhaps the new Mars landers will be outfitted with this technology enabling them to send back high definition videos. Then we will surely be able to see what the surface of the planet actually looks like in contract to the ever changing atmosphere on Mars.