Atop the rocket is an orbiter to study the Martian atmosphere and a lander, Schiaparelli, that will serve as a prototype for the second phase of the ExoMars mission, a rover scheduled to launch in 2018. Since emerging from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has launched two missions to the Red Planet: Mars 96, in 1996, and Phobos-Grunt, in 2011. Once landed, the probes will help in examining the surface and topography of the Red Planet in the hopes of determining if Mars is, or has ever been, home to alien life, reported the Verge.
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“The fact that they’ve not found life doesn’t mean certainly that there’s no life there”, said Ferri, noting that much of the planet’s vast surface hasn’t yet been closely examined. “ExoMars 2016” is an astrobiology mission by the European Space Agency in collaboration with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).
Two Electra radios form part of NASA’s participation in the project, carried on the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) to improve communications with the lander the expedition plans to drop in the Schiaparelli region.
ExoMars project scientist, Jorge Vago, said: “Essentially, our spacecraft is a giant nose in the sky”.
“Finding that life exists elsewhere in the solar system would be a huge discovery, so the evidence has to be strong”.
October 16: Three days before reaching Mars, TGO and Schiaparelli separate.
That’s because it’ll also be a working test for several key technologies that will be vital for future human trips to Mars, including landing options.
More than 90 per cent of the methane produced on Earth comes from “biological sources”.
Searching for signs of past and present life is also the main goal of the upcoming rover.
The ExoMars program is expected to cost ESA 1.3 billion euros (about $1.45 billion at current exchange rates), ESA officials have 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). The rover has a 6ft drill and is created to find biosignatures of long-dead or still-living microbes. After a series of complex manoeuvres to place the orbiter in a circular orbit 400 kilometres above Mars, the search will begin in earnest for the source of short-lived plumes of methane that occur in some areas during the Martian summer.
October 19: TGO inserts itself into an orbit around Mars.
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Signals from the spacecraft, received at European Space Agency’s (ESA) control centre in Darmstadt, Germany via the Malindi ground tracking station in Africa, confirmed the launch was fully successful and the spacecraft was in good health.
