The European Space Agency announced yesterday a significant milestone in the development of the next Mars mission: the core module of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has been delivered to Thales Alenia. The core module consists of the structure, thermal control, and propulsion systems; a lot of assembly and testing remains before the 2016 launch. It needs electronics, power systems, instruments, telecom, and so on. But it’s beginning to look a lot like a spacecraft.
February 4th, 2014
ExoMars baby pictures: Spacecraft core module delivered to assembly site The Planetary Society
January 22nd, 2014
Large international interest in riding with NASA’s next Mars Rover NASA Spaceflight
The next NASA rover to be sent to the surface of Mars has received twice the usual amount of proposals for carrying science and exploration technology instruments. The agency is reviewing a total of 58 submitted proposals, 17 of which came from international partners, ahead of a proposed mission in 2020. Announced at the end of 2012, the next NASA rover will be based on the Curiosity Rover that is currently exploring the surface of Mars.
July 2nd, 2013
ESA Euronews: The Mars detectives
Europe’s off to Mars. Again. We have sent robots to fly over Mars, crawl over Mars and soon to dig down into Mars – searching for signs that once, perhaps deep in the past, this planet may have been home to life. It might be an obvious choice, but still a puzzle, and one that we’re only just beginning to piece together. And finding evidence of life will require the skill of the finest detectives.
This is a mystery that Europe’s ExoMars mission is ready to solve. In 2016 it will have a satellite in orbit around Mars, designed to test for methane, and by 2018 this rover will be rolling around the Red Planet. The mission will be the first to set out with the direct intention of finding signs of life, now, and in the past.
March 20th, 2013
Europe, Russia ink deal on double mission to Mars
The European Space Agency (ESA) said it signed a deal on Thursday with its Russian counterpart to launch two unmanned missions to Mars, a quest that was rocked by a US pullout last year.
Called ExoMars, the scheme entails sending an orbital probe to the Red Planet in January 2016 to look for atmospheric traces of methane gas, a pointer to the existence of microbial life.
It will also send down a small stationary lander to test key technologies for the second mission — the launch of a six-wheeled rover in 2018.
December 4th, 2012
NASA Announces Robust Multi-Year Mars Program; New Rover to Close Out Decade of New Missions
Building on the success of Curiosity’s Red Planet landing, NASA has announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020. This announcement affirms the agency’s commitment to a bold exploration program that meets our nation’s scientific and human exploration objectives.
“The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “With this next mission, we’re ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s.”
The planned portfolio includes the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers; two NASA spacecraft and contributions to one European spacecraft currently orbiting Mars; the 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to study the Martian upper atmosphere; the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, which will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars; and participation in ESA’s 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing “Electra” telecommunication radios to ESA’s 2016 mission and a critical element of the premier astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover.
June 20th, 2012
ESA tests self-steering rover in ‘Mars’ desert
ESA assembled a top engineering team then challenged them to devise a way for rovers to navigate on alien planets. Six months later, a fully autonomous vehicle was charting its own course through Chile’s Mars-like Atacama Desert.
The recent test of the Seeker full-scale rover was the outcome of gathering a multidisciplinary team at a single site, working against the clock to achieve a breakthrough. “Their challenge was to demonstrate how a planetary rover – programmed with state-of-the-art software for autonomous navigation and making decisions – could traverse 6 km in a Mars-like environment and come back where it started,” explained ESA’s Gianfranco Visentin.
December 17th, 2011
ESA, NASA, Russia Redesign ExoMars Aviation Week
Science chiefs from the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos have begun laying the ground work to redesign a two-pronged robotic Mars mission to accommodate greater participation by Russia.
The ExoMars mission was upended earlier this year by uncertainty surrounding NASA’s ability to fund the joint campaign.
September 24th, 2010
Space allies go after Martian methane
The scientific instruments have been selected for the first U.S.-European joint mission to Mars, and they’re going to be looking for methane. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will be loaded up with gadgets designed to sniff out whether the gas is being generated by geological or biological processes.
Unexpected levels of methane were detected by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter in 2003, and the find was confirmed by ground-based observations supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation. One of the places where plumes of methane are rising into the Martian atmosphere is Nili Fossae, which is considered a prime target in the search for traces of Martian life.
The ExoMars experiments will track down more precisely where Mars’ methane is coming from.
August 27th, 2010
Tracing the Big Picture of Mars’ Atmosphere
One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily maps of global, pole-to-pole, vertical distributions of the temperature, dust, water vapor and ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere.
The joint European-American mission, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, will seek faint gaseous clues about possible life on Mars. This instrument, called the ExoMars Climate Sounder, will supply crucial context with its daily profiling of the atmosphere’s changing structure.
August 15th, 2010
New Mars Orbiter Will Be a Super-Sniffer
The first joint U.S.-European mission to Mars now has a plan for its toolkit.
Scheduled for launch in 2016, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will study the chemical composition of Mars’ atmosphere with a suite of instruments specially suited to the task. These instruments are expected to take measurements 1,000 times more sensitive than those by previous Mars orbiters.
“To fully explore Mars, we want to marshal all the talents we can on Earth,” said European Space Agency scientist David Southwood. Traveling around Mars in a circular path, the ExoMars spacecraft will record spectra of the sun as its telescope picks up the light that reaches it through orbital sunrise and sunset. Depending on the composition of gas in the atmosphere, sunlight will pass through it differently.
“If you take the spectra fast,” said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Geoffrey Toon, “you can measure the gas abundance at many different heights above the planet — 70 measurements as the sun rises, and 70 as it sets.”