ESA’s Mars Express, successfully inserted into orbit around Mars on 25 December 2003, is about to reach its final operating orbit above the poles of the Red Planet. The scientific investigation has just started and the first results already look very promising, as this first close-up image shows.
January 19th, 2004
Europe’s stunning Red Planet view
The first image of the Red Planet taken by Europe’s Mars Express probe since it arrived in orbit has been released. The picture shows a part of the Valles Marineris, a giant canyon that runs across the middle of the planet.
January 16th, 2004
Plans for Mars weather report The Australian
It may be years before anyone sets foot on Mars, but the European Space Agency (ESA) today said it hoped to soon provide a daily forecast for weather on the red planet. Data will be provided by an experiment aboard the Mars Express spacecraft, which is making its final orbital adjustments around Mars after being captured by the red planet’s gravity last month.
January 15th, 2004
Scientists examine first images from Mars Express New Scientist
Mission scientists for the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft saw the first images and data from the orbiter on Thursday. Mike McKay, flight operations director at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, told New Scientist: “They blew me away.” The images will be released to the public on 20 January, with the first scientific results and 3-D videos expected to follow three days later.
January 8th, 2004
Europeans still trying to locate Mars probe The London Free Press
Disappointed European scientists insisted they were still in the race to find signs of life on Mars after another attempt to reach their missing Beagle 2 probe failed to pick up a signal yesterday. As NASA scientists proudly broadcast the first full-colour pictures of the Martian surface taken by their craft that landed safely over the weekend, their colleagues at the European Space Agency were scrambling to keep their first mission to Mars alive.
January 7th, 2004
Mars Express Fails to Contact Beagle 2
Europe’s Mars Express orbiter failed to pick up a signal from the Beagle 2 probe on Wednesday, leaving a disappointed mission control without sign from the lander since it was spun off toward the Red Planet in mid-December.
January 7th, 2004
Europe strikes out in Mars lander hunt
The latest efforts to contact a British-led mission to Mars from its orbiting mother ship failed Wednesday, compounding fears that the Beagle 2 probe crashed during a Christmas Day touchdown. Gloom surrounding the first all-European mission to Mars contrasts with the joy at NASA, whose robotic explorer Spirit safely landed on the Red Planet during the weekend and has transmitted high-definition pictures in the last few days.
January 3rd, 2004
Mars Express To Move In Closer to Pick up Beagle’s Bark The Planetary Society
It’s been nine days since the European Space Agency’s Beagle 2 is believed to have passed through the Martian atmosphere and landed on the surface, but so far it hasn’t uttered so much as a tentative yelp. Although the dozen or so attempts through NASA’s Mars Odyssey and the Jodrell Bank radio observatory in England have failed to pick up any sound from Beagle, ESA scientists are not ready to give up hope yet. At this point, the “most likely scenario” for making contact will be next Wednesday, on January 7, at 1:13 p.m. Central European TIME (CET) [12:13 Greenwich Mean Time], Mars Express Project Scientist Agustin Chicarro told reporters yesterday in a press conference hosted by The Planetary Society at its headquarters in Pasadena, California.
December 31st, 2003
Mars Odyssey Fails Again to Contact Beagle 2
NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter failed for an eighth time to contact the Beagle 2 probe Wednesday, but scientists say they have not given up hope of hearing from the lander, which was to have touched down on Mars almost a week ago. Mission controllers sent Beagle a message Wednesday designed to reset its internal clock. Scientists have said a problem with the clock’s software, confusing the timing of its planned transmissions, could be behind its silence. They said it was too early to tell whether the reset command had worked. While mission scientists hope a technical glitch is the problem, they acknowledge that Beagle may have tumbled down a crater on the rocky Martian surface.
December 30th, 2003
Major Mars Express scheduled orbit change achieved
This morning, at 09:00 CET, the first European mission to Mars registered another operational success. The Mars Express flight control team at ESOC prepared and executed another critical manoeuvre, bringing the spacecraft from an equatorial orbit into a polar orbit around Mars. All commands were transmitted to Mars Express via ESA’s new Deep Space Station in New Norcia, Australia. This morning, the main engine of Mars Express was fired for four minutes to turn the spacecraft into a new direction, at a distance of 188 000 kilometres from Mars and about 160 million kilometres from Earth. On 4 January 2004, this new polar orbit will be reduced even further.