On Monday, two robotic spacecraft, an orbiter and a lander, will now embark on a journey to Mars that will last several months, as this space mission is headed by a collaboration between Europe and Russia. This unmanned mission's goal is to search for possible biological or geological signatures of life on the Red Planet.
The European Space Agency and Russian space agency Roscosmos launched this spacecraft via a Proton rocket, from the Baikonur Cosmodrom in Kazakhstan, Central Asia at around 5:31 A.M. EDT as all went according to plan. Roscosmos announced that this launch was successful.
This space mission is also known as the ExoMars 2016 will involve two scientific phases that aims to hunt for evidence of microbial signs of life on the surface of Mars. ESA also adds that the aim of both space agencies is to determine whether life on Mars exists.
The Trace Gas Orbiter is fully equipped with a scientific suite of high tech instruments where this orbiter is scheduled to arrive on the Red Planet in October after journeying for 308 million miles.The main mission of the TGO involves capturing the Red Planet and scanning its atmospheric composition as it will deploy its lander known as the Schiaparelli after about three days from entering Martian atmosphere.
During its second phase, this Martian rover will begin its exploration on the surface by 2018 which will be likely delayed due to some financial issues. Another major goal of the orbiter is to detect the presence of methane, which can indicate biological traces of microbes which is also present on Earth. The presence of methane means that microbes exist on Mars, as this type of gas is only expelled by living creatures. Past Mars missions also detected this essential gas.
According to ExoMars project scientist, Jorge Vargo, TGO will sniff out the atmosphere in Mars similar to a big nose. ESA says that methane is generally destroyed when it is exposed to extreme ultraviolet radiation in a span of a hundred years. However, since methane is still produced on Mars today, then this can be a crucial indication of hidden life on the otherwise, dry and arid planet.
The orbiter will then conduct a thorough analyses of Martian methane which will be more in depth than any other Martian mission. This can help scientists determine its primordial origins.
The lander on the other hand is named after a 19th century Italian astronomer, where it will spend some several days in measuring the overall climate conditions of the Red Planet from its seasons and weather events such as dust storms.