MarsNews.com

ESA, NASA, Russia Redesign ExoMars

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 23:32:36 -0800

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.

Space allies go after Martian methane

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 08:40:55 -0800

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.

Tracing the Big Picture of Mars' Atmosphere

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:38:31 -0800

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.

New Mars Orbiter Will Be a Super-Sniffer

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 08:55:34 -0800

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."

Mars sample return mission could begin in 2018

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:05:28 -0800

Space officials in the United States and Europe are planning an ambitious dual-rover mission that could start collecting Martian soil samples in 2018 to be picked up by a subsequent mission and returned to Earth in the 2020s. The costly mission would blast off on an Atlas 5 rocket in 2018 and land two rovers on Mars with a single "sky crane" descent system that will be tested for the first time at the Red Planet in August 2012. It would be the first time two rovers will be delivered to the same landing site on Mars. The European Space Agency's ExoMars rover and a $2 billion NASA Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher mission are the leading candidates for the tandem project.

European Space Agency Plans Mars Mission

Tue, 25 Mar 2003 12:00:00 -0800

The European Space Agency will send an unmanned mission to Mars in 2009 to put a roving vehicle on the planet to search for evidence of life, the agency said Tuesday. The ESA hopes the mission, known as ExoMars, also will provide new insight into the planet's surface and atmosphere. The trip is part of ESA's preparation for eventual manned missions to Mars.