ExoMars: ESA's search for life on Mars!

Besides Earth, there are 3 possible sites for life in the solar system: Mars, Jupiter’s moon Europa, and Saturn’s moon Titan. It may be decades before a spacecraft can be sent to search for life in the latter sites; but, this decade will see a search for life – current or ancient – on the surface of Mars with advanced technology. The ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) mission will be led by the European Space Agency, with contributions from NASA and the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos.

The first ExoMars spacecraft will be the Mars Trace Gas Mission orbiter, scheduled to be launched aboard a NASA Atlas V rocket in 2016. The spacecraft’s primary mission will be to map the sources of methane in the Martian atmosphere; methane is of interest because planetary scientists have speculated that the gas may be of biological origin on Mars, just as it is on Earth. Instruments aboard the orbiter will also measure water vapor and 15 other trace gases in the atmosphere.

The Mars Trace Gas Mission orbiter will remain in orbit to act as a relay station for the ExoMars rover, scheduled for launch in 2018. The ExoMars rover will be the heaviest spacecraft landed on the Martian surface to date. Because of its weight (207-270 kg), the rover will require NASA’s Sky-Crane landing system to make a safe, soft landing. Sky-Crane uses a combination of a supersonic (Mach 2) opening parachute and retrorockets to bring the descent stage and rover to within 7.5 meters of the surface. Then, the rover will be lowered by cables while the descent stage hovers on its retrorockets.



The rover will contain a suite of sophisticated instruments to search for evidence of water, either current or ancient, on the surface or below. First, a ground-penetrating radar system – WISDOM for Water Ice and Subsurface Deposit Information on Mars - will look for evidence of water ice down to 2 to 3 meters below the surface. The WISDOM instrument will be used to find interesting sites for the core drill.

There is an infrared spectrometer attached to the drill: Ma-MISS – Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies. MA-MISS will study the distribution and composition of water-related minerals, such as clays and carbonates.

The core drill will also deliver samples from, up to 2 meters below ground, to the inlet port of the Rover Payload Module, where other instruments will analyze them.

There’s also a Life Marker Chip which will use technology from medical diagnostics to look for evidence of organic molecules.

Current plans are for NASA to send its own, smaller (65-kg) rover to land near the ESA rover. The Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C) rover will conduct its own life-search and geological survey. The ‘cacher’ part of the name comes from its secondary mission, to collect and store (cache) surface and core drill samples for possible recovery by a future sample return mission.

Evidence of life outside the Earth would be an historic development, not only in science; but, in philosophy, possibly even theology. It will change the way we view our relationship to the rest of the Universe.

Edited to add: Look for updates on the MarsDaily website.