ExoMars
Europe
and Russia recently launched a spacecraft in a joint mission to sniff out signs
of life on Mars and bring humans a step closer to flying to the red planet
themselves.
·
The craft, part
of the ExoMars program, blasted off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan
on board a Proton rocket, starting a seven-month journey through space.
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It carries an
atmospheric probe that is to study trace gases such as methane.
Why study
Methane?
·
Methane is a
chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life. Besides, previous Mars
missions have detected traces of methane in the planet’s atmosphere.
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Scientists
believe the methane could stem from micro-organisms, called methanogenes, that
either became extinct millions of years ago and left gas frozen below the
planet’s surface, or that some methane-producing organisms still survive.
·
Another
explanation for the methane in Mars’s atmosphere could be that it is produced
by geological phenomena, such as the oxidation of iron.
About ExoMars:
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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.
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The ExoMars
mission will complement the work of Nasa’s Curiosity rover which has spent more
than three years on Mars as part of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission.
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The second part
of the ExoMars mission in 2018 will deliver a European rover to the surface of
Mars. It will be the first with the ability to both move across the planet’s
surface and drill into the ground to collect and analyze samples.
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The cost of the
ExoMars mission to the European Space Agency, including the second part due in
2018, is expected to be about 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion). Russia’s
contribution comes on top of that.
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