The European Space Agency and Roscosmos have successfully launched a robotic spacecraft as part of a joint mission to search for life on Mars. The ExoMars probe is expected to reach the Red Planet in seven months' time.
Image: Reuters/S. Zhumatov
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The unmanned ExoMars spacecraft blasted off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur spaceport on board a Russian rocket at 3:31 p.m. local time (0931 UTC) on Monday.
About 11 hours after takeoff, the craft is scheduled to separate from the rocket and continue on course for Mars - a journey of 496 million kilometers (308 million miles).
DW reporter Jessie Wingard watched the launch from the European Space Agency's main mission control center in the German city of Darmstadt.
ExoMars 2016 is expected to arrive on Mars on October 19. Scientists hope it will shed light on whether life once existed - or still exists - on the Red Planet.
The craft is carrying an atmospheric probe called a Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), tasked with photographing the planet's surface and analyzing its air for evidence of life. It'll also piggyback a lander that will test technologies needed for the arrival of a rover due to follow in two years' time.
ExoMars is the first phase of a two-part Mars exploration collaboration between the European Space Agency and Russia's Roscosmos space agency. The second phase of the mission in 2018 is expected to deliver a rover capable of moving across the planet's surface, drilling into the ground and collecting samples.
Sniffing for gases
The TGO's main goal will be to analyze Mars' atmosphere for methane - a gas that exists on Earth and is largely created by living micro-organisms. The gas has been detected by previous Mars missions, but scientists aren't sure what's producing it.
"TGO will be like a big nose in space," according to ExoMars project scientist Jorge Vago.
Methane can either be generated by biological processes, such as microbes decomposing organic matter, or by geological conditions. That might involve gas trapped frozen below the surface, or the oxidation of iron, similar to what occurs in active volcanoes.
The ESA said the high-tech equipment will analyze Mars' methane more closely than any previous mission.
Signs of life?
Today's Martian surface is considered too dry and radiation-rich to support organisms. However, conditions on the planet some 3.5 billion years ago may have been wetter, warmer, and generally more amenable to life.
The ExoMars mission: Phase 1 begins
The goal of the ExoMars mission is to search for traces of life on Mars. The first phase of the mission will search for the best place to do so on the red planet.
Image: ESA
All fueled up
More than a decade's worth of work is tucked inside the body of this Russian Proton-M rocket: the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli EDM lander. The rocket, having just been fueled, was moved to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 10, 2016, where it was raised upright. Historically, the Proton rocket has a failure rate of 10 percent.
Image: ESA
Separation
Hours after the launch, the orbiter (black) and lander (gold) will emerge from the rocket's shell. Thus begins their seven-month journey to Mars. The Earth-Mars orbital alignment is favorable to this portion of the ExoMars mission, meaning the journey is a relatively short one.
Image: ESA
Goodbye, friend
Having accompanied each other through empty space for more than 200 days, the lander and orbiter will detach from one another three days before reaching Mars. The time is late October. For the rest of their robotic lives, they're on their own.
Image: ESA
Down it goes!
And the lander's off! At this point it's traveling at more than 20,000 kilometers per hour (12,500 miles per hour, or about 3 miles per second). Its destination is predetermined: Meridiani Planum, a flat, broad plain rich in hematite, which on Earth is often formed in hot springs. Things are about to get hot...
Image: ESA
Soft landing
Mars' atmosphere will "drag" or slow the lander, allowing it to deploy a parachute (model seen here) to reduce its velocity to roughly 200 kilometers per hour (120 MPH). When its height above the surface reaches 1.2 kilometers, the cord will sever and the lander will deploy thrusters to slow its descent and land.
Image: ESA
Tasting the air
Once on Mars, a variety of instruments inside the lander will collect various atmospheric data over a period of four days. This will give Europe's and Russia's space agencies critical information for a future rover landing. When the four days are up, Schiaparelli's battery will run out. Its mission is over.
Image: ESA
Great view up here!
Meanwhile, the orbiter will still be scooting around up above. The jets seen here will only be deployed initially - to change an elliptical orbit into a circular one.
Image: ESA
Something smells
At that point, the orbiter's job for the next few years will be to "sniff" Mars' atmosphere for traces of methane gas. Scientists in Europe and Russia will be analyzing this data to determine the best spot to aim their rover. Methane could be a clue to biological activity - a sign of life on Mars.
Image: ESA
The ExoMars rover
A 2018 follow-up launch will send the ExoMars rover toward a predetermined point on the red planet - likely Oxia Planum, which is 3,000 meters below the Martian mean and which is rich in iron-magnesium. That means water might have played a role there. See that dark gray cylinder on the front...?
Image: ESA
Drill, baby, drill!
That's the drill that will collect "cores" of Martian soil (prototype above). The hope is that when it's analyzed inside the machine through an organic molecule analyzer, it will yield signs that biological activity once occurred there. The earliest that would happen is 2019 (and maybe 2021). But it would be enormously historic. It would be the first direct evidence of life on Mars.
Image: ESA
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"Proving that life exists or has existed on Mars would show that Earth is not unique in terms of having life on it," Rolf de Groot, head of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Robotic Exploration Coordination Office, told Reuters.
"That would make it much more likely that there are other places in the universe that also have life," he added.
The US space agency currently has two operational rovers on Mars: Curiosity and Opportunity. And NASA this week announced plans to launch a Mars spacecraft designed to study the planet's deep interior in 2018.
