The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Schiaparelli, a lander, were carried by a Russian rocket that blasted from Kazakhstan early this morning.
Advertisement
Consisting of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mothership and the Schiaparelli entry, descent, and landing demonstrator module, the ExoMars 2016 mission is tasked with looking for evidence of life on Mars. The prime contractor is Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales and Finmeccanica.
A Martian orbiter equipped with instruments to detect signs of life and carrying an experimental lander has been launched today by the European Space Agency from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome. In Earth, some living organisms are capable of producing methane as a metabolic byproduct. “ExoMars Phase 2 will launch in 2018 and includes a rover created to conduct exobiology and geochemistry research”.
“A launch is always a tricky affair, and in particular the trajectory injection that requires four burns of the Breeze upper stage over a 10-hour period”, Jorge Vago, ESA’s ExoMars project scientist, told Spaceflight Now on the eve of launch.
The probe will investigate whether methane in the Martian atmosphere is coming from a geological source or is being produced by microbes.
Although TGO’s main science mission is scheduled to last until December 2017, it has enough fuel to continue operations for years after, if all goes well.
While Electra radios have already been deployed to Mars in Curiosity and aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for data relays, the radios travelling with ExoMars have around double the older versions’ signal strength. Moreover, the fact the mission took place amid turbulent East-West ties heightened its significance, he said. The orbiter will settle into a stable orbit and take readings for different gases in the planet’s atmosphere, with a focus on traces of methane (which could hint at the existence of biological life). In October, the Russian and European mission will arrive in orbit around the planet next door, where it will sniff the atmosphere and send an experimental lander to the surface. “If there is methane it means there is basically a process going on now”.
The second ExoMars journey will be launched somewhere around 2018, and it will have a life and fossil detecting rover. Then, on October 19, Schiaparelli will enter Mars’ atmosphere, landing on the planet’s surface in just under six minutes.
Advertisement
Although the source and the chemistry of the water was unknown, the discovery will change scientists’ thinking about whether the planet that is most like Earth in the solar system could support present day microbial life.
