BLOG

ESA’s ExoMars mission arrives at Mars

October 20th, 2016

Mars has a new companion!

It’s called the Trace Gas Orbiter, which is now successfully in orbit around the red planet to study its atmosphere. What is it looking for? Gases that could indicate biological activity – methane, for example.

Trace Gas Orbiter, or TGO, is part of the European Space Agency’s ExoMars program. This is the first mission of the program, and it’s demonstrating technologies that will help the agency get ready for future missions. In 2020, the European Space Agency (ESA) will use this orbiter to relay data to a new rover.

What’s onboard the orbiter? TGO carries instruments that will study the sources and the degradation products of methane, which could indicate the presence or history of processes having to do with either biology or geology. The instruments include a chemistry suite and a color and stereo surface imaging system.

Why is the orbiter called the Trace Gas Orbiter? That’s because it will be looking for gases that exist in the atmosphere of Mars in extremely small quantities.

TGO hasn’t been alone on its trip to Mars; the mission also carried with it a module for demonstrating entry, descent and landing on the red planet. This is known as Schiaparelli. It is designed to land on the surface in order to look for evidence of life.

A few days ago, it disconnected from the orbiter and headed toward the planet’s surface. As data is still being processed, there’s a lot that we don’t know about Schiaparelli’s status yet. Many things had to happen in the proper sequence in order for a soft landing, but we are still not sure about the final outcome.

Where was Schiaparelli’s targeted landing site? A region that has a layer of hematite, an iron oxide. Why is iron oxide exciting? Because from what we know about hematite on Earth, it nearly always exists where there is liquid water!

The landing region is also flat and rather smooth. What else made this landing site an excellent choice? It has a relatively low elevation which means Schiaparelli could use the thicker atmosphere to help itself slow down.

Mars
ESA will be following up this mission with another in 2020. The upcoming mission will land a rover on the surface, and will utilize the TGO for relaying data back to Earth.

ExoMars is a joint mission between ESA and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency. This first ExoMars mission launched earlier this year on a Proton rocket.

Stay on top of the latest from the mission – follow #ExoMars on Twitter.

Learn more about the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission at the ESA website.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

-->