The European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday announced mission extensions for three spacecraft currently exploring Mars, Venus and the Earth’s magnet field.
The extensions will allow Europe’s current Mars Express and Venus Express probes to continue their missions at their respective planets through Dec. 31, while ESA’s Cluster spacecraft will continue to do the same at Earth.
The announcement marks the third extension for Mars Express, which launched toward the red planet in 2003 and ended its initial mission in October 2005. The boxy Mars Express is Europe’s first mission to Mars and carries seven instruments, including a ground-penetrating radar that has probed beneath the Martian surface to discover pockets of buried water-ice.
February 11th, 2009
Europe Extends Missions to Mars, Venus and Earth
November 24th, 2008
Mars Express observes aurorae on the Red Planet
Scientists using ESA’s Mars Express have produced the first crude map of aurorae on Mars. These displays of ultraviolet light appear to be located close to the residual magnetic fields generated by Mars’s crustal rocks. They highlight a number of mysteries about the way Mars interacts with electrically charged particles originating from the Sun.
The aurorae on Mars were discovered in 2004 using the SPICAM ultraviolet and infrared atmospheric spectrometer on board Mars Express. They are a powerful tool with which scientists can investigate the composition and structure of the Red Planet’s atmosphere.
July 31st, 2008
Mars Express acquires sharpest images of martian moon Phobos
Mars Express closed in on the intriguing martian moon Phobos at 6:50 CEST on 23 July, flying past at 2.96 km/s, only 100 km from the centre of the moon. The ESA spacecraft’s fly-bys of the moon have returned its most detailed full-disc images ever, also in 3-D, using the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board.
Phobos is what scientists call a ‘small irregular body’. Measuring 27 km × 22 km × 19 km, it is one of the least reflective objects in the Solar System, thought to be a captured asteroid or a remnant of the material that formed the planets.
July 20th, 2008
Mars Express to rendezvous with Martian moon
Scientists and engineers are preparing ESA’s Mars Express for several close fly-bys of the Martian moon Phobos. Passing within 100 km of the surface, Mars Express will conduct some of the most detailed investigations of the moon to date.
The series of fly-bys will take place between 12 July and 3 August. During the second encounter, the spacecraft will fly within 273 km of the surface. Six days later, Mars Express will close to within just 97 km.
July 16th, 2008
Incredible pictures of Mars – and they look surprisingly like some parts of Earth The Daily Mail
Ever since Victorian astronomers pointed their telescopes towards Mars and wrongly believed they had discovered canals, mankind has been obsessed by the red planet.
Now these astonishing new images – captured by a European spacecraft in orbit around Mars – are helping to fuel that fascination.
They show in astonishing detail a network of giant valleys, vast plains and towering waterfalls carved into the surface of our neighbouring planet, millions of miles away. And while Mars today appears lifeless and parched, they are a reminder of how its surface was shaped by fast flowing streams, rivers and oceans.
The pictures were captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Probe – a spacecraft the size of a large fridge-freezer that has been circling Mars since Christmas 2003.
June 3rd, 2008
Five years of Mars Express – a European success story German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Now more than ever, Mars is the focus of planetary research. A week after the resoundingly successful landing manoeuvre of NASA’s Phoenix probe, scientists and engineers are celebrating the five-year anniversary of the launch of Mars Express, the first ever European planetary mission. The mission has already been extended a second time. “Mars Express has shown that Europe can assume a very important role in researching our solar system”, says Professor Johann-Dietrich Wörner, Chairman of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) while commenting on the Mars probe’s success. “Thanks to the German stereo camera on board the Mars Express, we can now observe our neighbouring planet through more realistic 3-D images than ever before. The 3-D images have opened up ‘new perspectives’ in the true sense of the word, not just for Mars, but for planetary research overall”, says DLR chief Wörner.
March 15th, 2007
Giant Pool of Water Ice at Mars’ South Pole
Mars is unlikely to sport beachfront property anytime soon, but the planet has enough water ice at its south pole to blanket the entire planet in more than 30 feet of water if everything thawed out.
With a radar technique, astronomers have penetrated for the first time about 2.5 miles (nearly four kilometers) beneath the south pole’s frozen surface. The data showed that nearly pure water ice lies beneath.
Discovered in the early 1970s, layered deposits of ice and dust cap the North and South Poles of Mars. Until now, the deposits have been difficult to study closely with existing telescopes and satellites. The current advance comes from a probe of the deposits using an instrument aboard the Mars Express orbiter.
August 28th, 2006
Mars Clouds Higher Than Any On Earth
Mars is home to the highest clouds ever discovered above the surface of a planet, astronomers said today.
The European Space Agency’s orbiting Mars Express spacecraft found clouds that are between 50 and 62 miles (80 to 100 kilometers) above the red planet.
The highest clouds on Earth top out at about 52 miles (84 kilometers).
The surprising clouds are most likely made of carbon dioxide, researchers said. There were detected with a camera that senses ultraviolet and infrared light, so there is no conventional picture of them.
The clouds were spotted by observing distant stars just before they disappeared behind Mars. The stars would dim as they went behind clouds.
May 25th, 2006
Lava tubes snapped snaking across Mars The New Scientist
Dramatic 3D images of ancient lava tubes on the Martian volcano, Pavonis Mons, have been captured by the Mars Express spacecraft.
Lava tubes are produced when lava on the top of a lava flow cools and forms a crust, while the subsurface lava remains molten. This molten lava continues to flow until the lava source is exhausted. In the case of Pavonis Mons, researchers believe the roofs of these tubes eventually collapsed, leaving long channels in the planet’s surface.
April 21st, 2006
Mars Express’s OMEGA uncovers possible sites for life
By mapping minerals on the surface of Mars using the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, scientists have discovered the three ages of Martian geological history – as reported in today’s issue of Science – and found valuable clues as to where life might have developed.
The new work shows that large bodies of standing water might only have been present on Mars in the remote past, before four thousand million years ago, if they were present at all. Within half a billion years, these conditions had faded away.