Under the Aurora Exploration Program, the European Space Agency (ESA) developed the concept and lunched the preparation activities of the ExoMars mission. This mission will start in 2013 whereas the flight will last nearly one year and has as objectives the following:
- To search for signs of past and present life on Mars;
- To characterize the water/geo-chemical environment as a function of depth in the shallow subsurface;
- To study the surface environment and identify hazards to future human missions;
- To investigate the planet’s subsurface and deep interior to better understand the evolution and habitability of Mars.
ExoMars will consist of an orbiter, a descent module and a six wheeled rover. The first European rover on Mars will carry a drill that can burrow up to 2 m into the Martian surface allowing its scientific instruments to analyse and sample the soil and search for mineral content, composition and traces of past and present life. Once the descent module carried out by the ExoMars spacecraft achieves landing on Mars surface safely, the rover, which will carry, in addition to the drill, Pasteur scientific instruments along with a sample processing system, will be responsible of the navigation and the exploration of Mars planet.
ExoMars is not the first planet robotic deployment mission since eight successful rovers have been deployed on the Moon and Mars over the previous space experiences, including crewed vehicles as well as remote controlled and autonomous robots. The Lunar Roving Vehicle developed by USA for the Apollo missions and the two Lunokhod lunar rovers developed by USSR were used to explore the Moon. The Mars Pathfinder was used the first Mars rover experiment, and the Mars Excursion Rovers Spirit and Opportunity continue to perform well. are two twin rovers landed on the opposite sides of Mars to search for rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activities on Mars. Future rover missions currently being planned include NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (launch in 2009) and the ESA’s ExoMars mission (launch in 2013). Spirit and Opportunity neede to be told by human operators which moves to make next. Because each signal takes half an hour to be relayed to Mars and the results take half an hour to come back, this has made progress on the red planet very slow.
PhD Scholatships in Robust Navigation and Path Planning for ExoMars Rovers, Cranfield University, UK … read more »
