Members of the European Space Agency (ESA) effort, Mars Express, have inspected their “exit ramp” on the road to the Red Planet. Mars Express project and industrial teams trekked to Kazakhstan a few weeks ago, eyeing the Baikonur cosmodrome where Mars Express will depart on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket in June 2003. The spacecraft is to orbit Mars starting in late 2003. The advance party also visited the Soyuz manufacturing plant in Samara, an industrial town on the banks of the Volga River.