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Paris, 2 June 2003
Press Release
Nx 36-2003

Mars Express en route for the Red Planet

Part 2 of 2

The orbiter's seven on-board instruments are expected to provide
considerable information about the structure and evolution of Mars. A
very high resolution stereo camera, the HRSC, will perform
comprehensive mapping of the planet at 10 m resolution and will even
be capable of photographing some areas to a precision of barely 2 m.
The OMEGA spectrometer will draw up the first mineralogical map of
the planet to 100 m precision. This mineralogical study will be taken
further by the PFS spectrometer - which will also chart the
composition of the Martian atmosphere, a prerequisite for
investigation of atmospheric dynamics. The MARSIS radar instrument,
with its 40 m antenna, will sound the surface to a depth of 2 km,
exploring its structure and above all searching for pockets of water.
Another instrument, ASPERA, will be tasked with investigating
interaction between the upper atmosphere and the interplanetary
medium. The focus here will be on determining how and at what rate
the solar wind, in the absence of a magnetic field capable of
deflecting it, scattered the bulk of the Martian atmosphere into
space. Atmospheric investigation will also be performed by the SPICAM
spectrometer and the MaRS experiment, with special emphasis on
stellar occultation and radio signal propagation phenomena.

The orbiter mission should last at least one Martian year (687 days),
while Beagle 2 is expected to operate on the planet's surface for 180
days.

Only a start to exploration

This first European mission to Mars incorporates some of the
objectives of the Euro-Russian Mars 96 mission, which came to grief
when the Proton launcher failed. And indeed a Russian partner is
cooperating on each of the orbiter's instruments. Mars Express forms
part of an international Mars exploration programme, featuring also
the US probes Mars Surveyor and Mars Odyssey, the two Mars
Exploration Rovers and the Japanese probe Nozomi. Mars Express may
perhaps, within this partnership, relay data from the NASA rovers
while Mars Odyssey may, if required, relay data from Beagle 2.

The mission's scientific goals are of outstanding importance. Mars
Express will, it is hoped, supply answers to the many questions
raised by earlier missions - questions concerning the planet's
evolution, the history of its internal activity, the presence of
water below its surface, the possibility that Mars may at one time
have been covered by oceans and thus have offered an environment
conducive to the emergence of some form of life, and even the
possibility that life may still be present, somewhere in putative
subterranean aquifers. In addition the lander doing direct analysis
of the soil and the environment comprises a truly unique mission. 

Mars Express, drawing heavily on elements of the Rosetta spacecraft
awaiting to be launched to a comet next year, paves the way for other
ESA-led planetary missions, with Venus Express planned for 2005 and
the BepiColombo mission to Mercury at the end of the decade. It is a
precursor too for continuing Mars mission activity under Aurora, the
programme of exploration of our solar system.

For further information, please contact:
ESA Media Relations Service
Tel:+33.(0)1.5369.7155
Fax:+33.(0)1.5369.7690

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