Europe off to Mars with the Russians – Le Figaro

The first part of the ExoMars European mission to blast off Monday aboard a Russian rocket.

This will Monday morning, the moment of truth for the European ExoMars mission to the red planet. After the defection of NASA in 2011, ESA has had to rely on cooperation with Russia to launch its most ambitious Mars exploration program. It is a Russian Proton rocket, which experienced four chess since 2012, which will send the EU mission to a seven-month journey to Mars. Suffice to say that the engineers and scientists in Europe will cross our fingers all goes well at takeoff, scheduled to 10:31 Paris time, but also for the advanced stages that follow. It was only on Monday evening, 12 hours after taking off from the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the teams of the control center of the European Space Agency in Darmstadt, Germany will know if ExoMars mission succeeded his departure to Mars.

for the first part of the ExoMars mission, which will have a second phase expected in 2018, Europe has two main objectives. The first is the Trace Gas Orbiter satellite (TGO), which will try to solve the mystery of the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere. An important goal because methane can be produced either by forms of life, or by underground hot springs. The second is a technology demonstrator, called Schiaparelli, who will enter the Martian atmosphere at 21000 km / h and landed smoothly on the surface.