Late last year, Mars Express moved behind the Sun and so the craft was put into hibernation for a month to help ensure its survival.

But when the hibernation period ended, Mars Express was so far away from Earth that the bandwidth of the link was reduced to a speed that was barely enough to support key activities.

Consequently, low-priority traffic - including the Mars webcam - was suspended.

ESA has announced that the webcam is now back in action. Bandwidth is still scarce, so only two observations are scheduled for April. But by the time May comes around, fresh images are expected almost every day.

If you're keen to keep up with the latest views of Mars, the VMC (Visual Monitoring Camera) blog has been integrated with the main Mars Express system so that it is automatically populated with new images.

The best case - though this is unlikely to happen - is that if everything happened at the optimal time, a new picture could appear in the blog less than an hour after it was taken.