Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
ExoMars
Summary
ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) is an astrobiology programme of the European Space Agency (ESA).
The goals of ExoMars are to search for signs of past life on Mars, investigate how the Martian water and geochemical environment varies, investigate atmospheric trace gases and their sources and, by doing so, demonstrate the technologies for a future Mars sample-return mission.
The first part of the programme is a mission launched in 2016 that placed the Trace Gas Orbiter into Mars orbit and released the Schiaparelli EDM lander. The orbiter is operational but the lander crashed on the planet's surface. The second part of the programme was planned to launch in July 2020, when the Kazachok lander would have delivered the Rosalind Franklin rover on the surface, supporting a science mission that was expected to last into 2022 or beyond. On 12 March 2020, it was announced that the second mission was being delayed to 2022 as a result of problems with the parachutes, which could not be resolved in time for the launch window.
The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and a test stationary lander called Schiaparelli were launched on 14 March 2016. TGO entered Mars orbit on 19 October 2016 and proceeded to map the sources of methane () and other trace gases present in the Martian atmosphere that could be evidence for possible biological or geological activity. The TGO features four instruments and will also act as a communications relay satellite. The Schiaparelli experimental lander separated from TGO on 16 October and was maneuvered to land in Meridiani Planum, but it crashed on the surface of Mars. The landing was designed to test new key technologies to safely deliver the subsequent rover mission.
In June 2023, a Roscosmos lander named Kazachok ("little Cossack", referring to a folk dance), was due to deliver the ESA Rosalind Franklin rover to the Martian surface. The rover would also include some Roscosmos built instruments. The second mission operations and communications would have been led by ALTEC's Rover Control Centre in Italy.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Ontological neighbourhood
Related courses (1)
EE-583: Spacecraft avionics architectures
The course presents and analyses the different systems, architectures and components of spacecraft avionics (on board data handling and processing systems) controlling and commanding spacecraft and pa
Related publications (4)
Related concepts (10)
Mars 2020
Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission that includes the rover Perseverance, the small robotic helicopter Ingenuity, and associated delivery systems, as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. Mars 2020 was launched from Earth on an Atlas V launch vehicle at 11:50:01 UTC on 30 July 2020, and confirmation of touch down in the Martian crater Jezero was received at 20:55 UTC on 18 February 2021. On 5 March 2021, NASA named the landing site of the rover Octavia E. Butler Landing.
Rover (space exploration)
A rover (or sometimes planetary rover) is a planetary surface exploration device designed to move across the solid surface on a planet or other planetary mass celestial bodies. Some rovers have been designed as land vehicles to transport members of a human spaceflight crew; others have been partially or fully autonomous robots. Rovers are typically created to land on another planet (other than Earth) via a lander-style spacecraft, tasked to collect information about the terrain, and to take crust samples such as dust, soil, rocks, and even liquids.
Mars sample-return mission
A Mars sample-return (MSR) mission is a proposed mission to collect rock and dust samples on Mars and return them to Earth. Such a mission would allow more extensive analysis than that allowed by onboard sensors. The three most recent concepts are a NASA-ESA proposal, a CNSA proposal, Tianwen-3, and a Roscosmos proposal, Mars-Grunt. Although NASA and ESA's plans to return the samples to Earth are still in the design stage as of 2022, samples have been gathered on Mars by the Perseverance rover.