Mission ExoMars Latest Updates, News: Mission To Discover Life On The Red Planet All Set to Take Off Soon

ExoMars, the two-part Martian astrobiology life searching project, is all set to take off for the first part of the mission. The goal of the mission is to search for signs of past and present lives in the Red Planet.

In a special report on D'News, Trace Dominguez indicated that there will be a spacecraft plummeting down the surface of Mars, sometime next week. He believes that the expedition will go a long way in telling us if life exists on the Red Planet.

The ExoMars is a two parted mission jointly built by the European Space Agency and Russian Federal Space Agency. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and a test stationary lander called 'Schiaparelli' were launched earlier this year in March. The TGO will deliver the 'Schiaparelli' on Oct 19, this year to the surface of Mars.

The 'Schiaparelli' is predicted to enter the upper atmosphere of Mars at an incredible speed of 13,000 miles per hour. It will use heat shields, parachutes and a kind of cosmic airbag to make a soft landing on the surface, reports Seeker. It is expected to act like a temporary weather station in Mars measuring the air pressure, humidity, wind and temperature at the landing site. However, the battery of the lander is expected to stay only for a short period of two days.

The TGO will act as a relay station transmitting the data captured by the lander to the Earth. Alongside, the TGO will map pockets of methane gas and other gases with an intent to find the exact source of the gases. This could possibly throw more light on the signs of life on the Martian surface as methane indicates the presence of microbial life.

Based on the findings of the first part of the mission, the second part will be taking off in the year 2020. A Roscosmos-built lander will be delivering the ESA-built ExoMars Rover to the Martian surface.