Update: A Google rep reminded me that to get the nearly ‘live’ images, you’ll have to view the Themis data through the new version of Google Earth. The link below is to the Themis ‘Live from Mars’ site, which doesn’t work the same way.

At the end of last week, the Google Earth and Maps team announced a new feature in Google Earth: the ability to see “live” data from Themis, the infrared imager on the Mars Odyssey orbiter.

(Note the qualifying quotation marks around “live” though — it’s still a few days behind. When I looked this afternoon, it was streaming images from 1 February.)

It’s a great idea, however, and it shows how the Internet has put the public side by side with scientists in the front row of the movie theater. This summer, the Phoenix mission should be commended for doing a similar thing, putting raw images up on the Web just as fast as they got to Earth.

Sadly, Phoenix transmits no more. And one might also wonder how long ‘live from Mars’ might live with Odyssey, which is getting a bit long in the tooth (it began orbiting in 2001). Odyssey last week underwent a slightly risky reboot to make sure that engineers could transfer some of its operations to backup systems if the need arises.