Europe’s historic search for life on Mars is set to take off today, as a heavy-lift Russian rocket blasts into space from Kazakhstan. Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and ESA’s ExoMars mission consists of two missions.
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The Mars lander will “sniff out” life following a seven-month cruise to the planet.
There are not one, but two probes, which will be looking to find things of interest on the fourth planet from the sun: the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and a small module called Schiaparelli.
In addition to enabling communication for the lander, the Trace Gas Orbiter will collect scientific data from an altitude of 400 kilometers above the surface. Open University scientist Manish Patel is in charge of the TGO’s ozone-mapping ultraviolet (UV) spectrometer instrument, while the rover at the centre of a follow-up mission scheduled for 2018 will also be built in the UK.
If the scientists find evidence of life – even primitive life that existed billions of years ago – it will be one of the biggest discoveries of all time. But first, we need a successful launch, something that’s been rather hard to come by of late.
As a spectator experience, liftoff was partly anti-climatic as cloud cover obscured much of the view of the rocket’s path. The rocket is carrying an orbiter and mini lander and they’re expected to reach Mars in October.
Life on Mars? ExoMars mission to study methane mystery may provide answer. The rover will be controlled through the Trace Gas Orbiter that will still be circling overhead.
If everything goes as planned, TGO and Schiaparelli will separate from each other on October 16, just three days before reaching the red planet. The Proton rocket carries the Mars probes created to uncover signs of life, both past and present, on the Red Planet.
The goal of the TGO is to map where methane is produced, and lay the groundwork for a further mission.
Mars’ methane could be from biological sources – such as primitive microbes similar to methanogens on Earth – or it could be linked to geological processes taking place in the presence of hot liquid water beneath the Martian surface.
TGO will then enter orbit around the Red Planet ahead of its exciting multiyear science mission.
TGO will analyse Mars’s methane in more detail than any previous mission, said ESA, in order to try determine its likely origin.
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Scientists want to solve the mystery of methane on Mars.
