ExoMars: an expedition to be launched in a few days
The ESA (European Space Agency) announced a joint mission with the Russian Space Science agency, Roscosmos, to land on the surface of Mars during the next week with a space probe to explore the atmosphere of the planet and gather more information. If the mission succeeds, NASA won’t be the only one to reach to the planet.
Travelling and immigrating to Mars is a dream that many companies have been trying to implement for years, on top of them SpaceX company which announced its first trip for a million people to travel and land on Mars, but before that happens, companies do exploratory tours to study it well and make sure that the planet is appropriate for human nature.
ExoMars mission
ExoMars mission was unveiled in a concurrent press statement. A reconnaissance mission designed to search for signs of geological and biological activities, and probe is expected to reach the planet on October 19th of this month to start the exploratory mission.
The two space agencies use special equipment features a “TGO” in this project to track gases and discover them as well as some of the devices that will be installed on the Schiaparelli lander probe. The separation between the device and the probe will happen three days before that, specifically on October 16.
TGO device will operate in a low altitude orbit and will scan the planet’s atmosphere to detect gas balance, water vapour, and any kind of other gases that could be detected by the device while the Schiaparelli probe will land with an airship to reach the surface of Mars and carry out any missions remotely.
Schiaparelli will work on as much information about the Mars‘s special structure and its atmosphere as possible. It will also go to some specified areas on the planet to detect any manifestation of vitality there. All the missions are pre-programmed but no mistakes should occur, not to lead to the failure of the landing.
History doesn’t forget the several previous attempts by the Russians to reach the surface of Mars which all were unsuccessful, starting with the Soviet Union’s journey in 1960 and another in 1970 to deliver exploratory devices of the Red Planet, but the attempt didn’t succeed and all devices were crashed.
The European Space Agency ESA tried to launch a new journey to Mars in 2003 through the probe Beagle 2 and it did arrive at the planet’s surface, but solar cells didn’t work well and the staff lost contact with the spacecraft few minutes later. The Russians tried again in 2011 to do an expedition to the moon Phobos, but the probe fell down and exploded inside the atmosphere of the planet.
Certainly after listing these past events, we know that if the ExoMars‘s mission successes, it will benefit a lot in space sciences and will be offering a new competitor to NASA, but this reconnaissance mission is going to need big accuracy to carry out the separation process between the probe and the TGO device on October 16. And then, after 3 days, equipments are supposed to arrive inside the planet Mars.
Primary indications shows the Schiaparelli’s ability to skip the first landing stages where the probe is designed primarily to simulate smart landing techniques and was developed and outfitted several times for this mission which certainly will be the focus of attention for millions who are hoping to see a new life on Mars soon.
