On board the Russian-made Proton-M rocket will be the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Schiaparelli lander which make up the first part of the two-phase European-led ExoMars mission.
The rocket was rolled out to the launch pad on Friday after the Proton’s Breeze upper stage had been filled with propellant and oxidizers by technicians on Thursday. For those of us interested in space exploration, the ExoMars launch can be viewed live at Space.com, courtesy of the European Space Agency (ESA).
The webcast starts at 4:30 a.m., so get to bed early. You can also watch ESA’s launch webcast directly here: http://livestream.com/ESA/exomars. It will take seven months for the TGO and the Schiaparelli lander to reach Mars, arriving in late October, according to Microcap Magazine.
Trace Gas Orbiter, or TGO
The TGO is a satellite that will be deployed on reaching Mars October 16, and will orbit around the planet, beginning a five-year study of the planet’s atmosphere, looking at all the chemicals that may be present, but focusing on a hunt for methane.
Methane on Earth is usually tied to biological activity but on Mars, the gas is somewhat of a mystery. It has appeared in sporadic and inexplicable spurts, and scientists say this may or may not be indicative of past or living populations of microorganisms.
Methane is easily broken apart by ultraviolet light from the Sun, so on Mars, methane shouldn’t hang around for very long. However, there have been puzzling appearances and sudden disappearances of the gas over particular locations at particular times, making the methane gas disappearing act one of Mars’ biggest mysteries to date.
The methane could be the by-product of a process called serpentinization, a geologic process that requires both heat and liquid water. Another theory for the occasional presence of methane may be that the gas was trapped long ago in ice-like crystalline structures called clathrates, that occasionally melt, releasing the gas.
Of course, the neatest theory is that the gas is being released by methane-producing microbes living deep beneath the surface of the planet. With four different scientific instruments, the TGO will be able to precisely map the locations and times when methane and other gasses are found in the atmosphere.
The Schiaparelli is a demonstration lander
The Schiaparelli is carrying the DREAMS of the ESA on its shoulders. Schiaparelli will attempt to pull off Europe’s first successful landing on the Red Planet on October 19. It should be noted that the ESA’s Beagle 2 lander had a soft landing on Mars in 2003, but never contacted Earth.
Schiaparelli’s surface payload consists of a package called DREAMS (Dust Characterisation, Risk Assessment, and Environment Analyser on the Martian Surface). Sensors will measure the wind speed and direction (MetWind), humidity (DREAMS-H), pressure (DREAMS-P), the atmospheric temperature close to the surface (MarsTem), the transparency of the atmosphere (Solar Irradiance Sensor, SIS), and atmospheric electrification (Atmospheric Radiation and Electricity Sensor; MicroARES), according to ESA.
“It’s basically a technology demonstration practice, which we exercise the full process of entry, descent and landing,” ExoMars 2016 project scientist Hakan Svedhem, with the European Space Agency told Discovery News. Remember that Schiaparelli is only a demonstrator model, so its batteries are only expected to last for a few days, long enough to send back some important data.
TGO will spend its first year orbiting Mars, getting itself in position for its science mission, set to commence at the end of 2017. Schiaparelli’s mission, while short-lived, is actually a dress-rehearsal to test out the entry, descent, and landing technologies needed to get the second part of this mission, a deep-drilling, life-hunting rover, safely on the surface of the Red Planet. The rover will be launched in 2018.
