ESA is in a Race Against Time to Fix ExoMars' Parachutes

Getting a probe safely to the surface of Mars is not easy: Numerous landing attempts have crashed. Sufficiently slowing a lander in the thin air requires plenty of sophisticated kit, including designer heat shields, powerful retrorockets, and, sometimes, giant airbags. But the European-Russian ExoMars mission is struggling with a bit of technology that hails from the 18th century: parachutes. High-altitude tests earlier this year revealed that ExoMars's chutes were tearing as they were pulled from their bags. The European Space Agency has turned to NASA colleagues for help, and this week, a joint team begins tests to see whether redesigned bags and chutes now work, and if not, why. It could be their last chance to fix the problem and preserve a launch scheduled for July 2020—or face another 2 years of delay.

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ESA's Exomars Schiaparelli Lander Lost

Essential data from the ExoMars Schiaparelli lander sent to its mothership Trace Gas Orbiter during the module’s descent to the Red Planet’s surface yesterday has been downlinked to Earth and is currently being analysed by experts.

Early indications from both the radio signals captured by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), an experimental telescope array located near Pune, India, and from orbit by ESA’s Mars Express, suggested the module had successfully completed most steps of its 6-minute descent through the martian atmosphere. This included the deceleration through the atmosphere, and the parachute and heat shield deployment, for example.

But the signals recorded by both Pune and Mars Express stopped shortly before the module was expected to touchdown on the surface. Discrepancies between the two data sets are being analysed by experts at ESA’s space operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

The detailed telemetry recorded by the Trace Gas Orbiter was needed to better understand the situation. At the same time as Schiaparelli’s descent, the orbiter was performing a crucial ‘Mars Orbit Insertion’ manoeuvre – which it completed successfully. These important data were recorded from Schiaparelli and beamed back to Earth in the early hours of Thursday morning.

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In fact, ESA stated the lander may have exploded.

NASA appears to have found what may be the wreckage.

Funding for Delayed ExoMars Mission Uncertain

European Space Agency Director-General Johann-Dietrich Woerner on May 9 expressed frustration with the equipment delays that forced a two-year slip in the launch of Europe’s ExoMars rover vehicle and said he would not write a blank check to keep the mission alive.

Addressing a briefing here, where he was attending ESA’s Living Planet Earth observation symposium, Woerner said he still did not fully understood why the project could not make its 2018 launch date. He wondered whether it is possible to have those responsible for the delay finance part of its cost.

“I was not only surprised, I was frustrated with this delay, which was for technical reasons on both the European and Russian sides,” Woerner said, adding that at first he did not accept it.

“I was fighting like hell” to keep the mission on schedule despite indications that multiple pieces of equipment would not make it in time for the launch, he said. “I’m very upset about it and I don’t understand it from a certain point of view.”

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ESA Postpones Exomars Rover to 2020

The European and Russian space agencies on May 2 said their joint ExoMars 2018 mission carrying a rover and an experiment-filled landing platform to Mars would not be ready in time and would be delayed to July 2020.

The delay, which ESA and Roscosmos officials had warned of since March, will add undetermined new costs to the program. ESA is expected to present to its governments a revised ExoMars scenario in June, including the financial impact of the delay, with governments likely to make a final decision during a December meeting of ESA government space ministers.

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ExoMars Spotted on its way to Mars

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Euro-Russian Exomars Launched on Proton Rocket

A joint European-Russian mission aiming to search for traces of life on Mars blasted off on Monday for the start of a seven-month unmanned space journey to the Red Planet.

A Proton rocket carrying the Trace Gas Orbiter to examine Mars's atmosphere and a descent module that will conduct a test landing on its surface launched into an overcast sky at the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe at 0931 GMT.

The spacecraft is set to detach from its Briz-M rocket booster just after 2000 GMT before beginning its 496-million-kilometre (308-million-mile) voyage through the cosmos.

The ExoMars 2016 mission, a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and its Russian equivalent Roscosmos, is the first part of a two-phase exploration aiming to answer questions about the existence of life on Earth's neighbour.

The Trace Gas Orbiter will examine methane around Mars while a lander dubbed Schiaparelli that will detach and descend to the surface of the fourth planet from the Sun.

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More info here.

Still more info here.

Finally, one more.

ExoMars Successfully Shipped to Baikonur

Europe's second mission to Mars has begun its journey from its birthplace in Cannes to its planned arrival at Mars on October 19. Since December 17 we've been able to watch every step of its journey, thanks to a stream of tweets from Albert Haldemann. He is overseeing the spacecraft's assembly, integration, and verification, and flew back and forth from Baikonur for the three trips required to transport ExoMars and all its equipment. Tweeting from Baikonur was technical operations officer Remy van Haarlem. I've Storified their tweets here, but include a few highlights below.

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ExoMars Mission Will Make its 2016 Launch Date. Barely.

Europe’s two-launch ExoMars mission to Mars in 2016 and 2018, which has run a budgetary obstacle course from the start, remains in deadlined-stressed mode with triple-shift work days on the eve of first mission’s shipment to Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome to prepare for a March launch, government and industry officials said Nov. 24.

Contrary to what several European Space Agency governments thought as they reluctantly financed the 1.2 billion-euro ($1.28 billion) ExoMars project — Europe’s principal space exploration mission — the industrial team led by Thales Alenia Space has been able to keep to the schedule and save the 2016 launch date.

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Oxia Planum is Recommended Landing Site for Russian/ESA Martian Rover

The joint ESA and Russian ExoMars rover’s top priority is to search the Martian surface for signs of life, past or present, and scientists think they know just the spot where – if life ever existed or exists on Mars – it might be found. Today the ExoMars team announced that the equatorial region named Oxia Planum has been recommended as the primary candidate for the landing site.

“Our preliminary analysis shows that Oxia Planum appears to satisfy the strict engineering constraints while also offering some very interesting opportunities to study, in situ, places where biosignatures might best be preserved,” said Jorge Vago, ESA’s project scientist.

The rover is currently scheduled to launch in 2018 and land on Mars in 2019, but the timetable is still under review, depending on any issues with construction of the rover. While the final landing site won’t be selected by both ESA and Roscosmos until six months before launch, this recommendation will weigh heavily in the decision.

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