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ExoMars is the first mission to visit the Red Planet to look for signs of life, now or in the past. It is a scientific and technical challenge of size. Euronews meets part of the team involved in this joint ESA-Roscosmos project in this month's edition of Space.
We start in the "Mars yard" at Airbus, Stevenage, near London. The specially built terrain is used to develop a semi-autonomous navigation software for the six-wheeled rover. The sand is very dry, like on Mars, and the rocks are chosen to pose a challenge to the rover and teach him to avoid obstacles that he can not cross.
Paul Meacham, senior systems engineer at Airbus, introduces us to one of the bench rovers, Bruno.
"Bruno is pretty much the same as the ExoMars rover, he has all the sensors and actuators you use to drive the rover on his own, starting with these two cameras at the top of the mast – they allow the rover to see 3D in much the same way as us, identify the rocks and slopes that precede it, and then analyze if there is any. "
The rover is the first to be equipped with a sophisticated drill, capable of digging two meters below the surface and processing samples in its onboard lab. He should be able to find microbes if there are any and look for life-related molecules that could hint at life in the depths of Martian history.
Reinvent the wheel
Building a machine capable of searching for life poses enormous challenges, including bringing back the life of the Earth with you. For engineers, it literally meant reinventing the moving wheel.
Meacham shows us their solution: "These metal wheels are really an important part of the locomotion system.We are not allowed to use rubber because it is an organic material, and if we try to detect life on Mars, we will not do it. " we want to detect something that we brought with us. So we have to get the same rubber compression, the calamitous, in a metal wheel, which is exactly what these metal wheels do. "
The current flight model rover is being built in a specially designed clean room, where crews work in teams to clean and sterilize components and instruments from scientific research institutes and research centers. universities from all over Europe.
Javier Pérez Mato, chief avionics integration engineer, showed us: "This small panel that you can see there, the square shape, is the place where will be built all the time. ExoMars Rover service module electronics Everything is assembled in this room, which was specially designed for the ExoMars mission.And if there is life on Mars, I hope we will find it with this mission! "
The absolute imperative of not taking samples of life from Earth to Mars means that great efforts have been made to ensure that the rover is still pristine, including to design ways to allow the rover to remain intact. team to work on the remote rover. Abbie Hutty, Delivery Manager at ExoMars, explains: "Many challenges have been encountered in getting very clean tools to clean all ground support equipment, and this facility has been designed so that all electronics engineers can work on the rover, but without having to go into this clean room, because it's so hard to have to put all the necessary equipment to go there. "
Oxia Planum – the chosen landing site
The joint ESA-Roscosmos mission has already launched its first spacecraft for the Red Planet – the Ex OrMars Trace Gas Orbiter – which took off from Baikonur in 2016.
It has been fully operational since April of this year, as it detects the atmosphere in search of methane and gives a detailed picture of the surface.
After a series of meetings – including one at the University of Leicester, UK and another at BELSPO's Belgian Science Policy Office – the team has now chosen the landing site for the second ExoMars mission.
They want the rover to explore an area called Oxia Planum, an ancient lake located near the equator.
Hakan Svedhem, scientist of the ExoMars project TGO at ESA, explains his choice: "Oxia Planum is really one of the most interesting places for a LG to explore.In particular, with the drill core, you can analyze and analyze the surface, materials and materials of subsurface.
"Besides, it's a safe enough place to land, because we know that the surface is safe to land in. It's located at a low level, so the probe has a lot of atmosphere to sneak in and slow down, and has time to react and react before it lands. "
The Russian landing platform
The Russian component of the mission is the landing platform that will carry the ExoMars rover.
The platform should contain 11 scientific instruments to measure the Martian atmosphere – although time is running out to prepare them, said Daniel Rodionov, scientific leader of the ExoMars project of the Russian Institute for Space Research IKI:
"There is no doubt that the launch in July 2020 is a fairly ambitious task because, with regard to the scientific equipment, the scientific equipment of the landing platform is particularly critical, since it began to be developed much later than the material on the rover. "
What the mission has already taught us so far is that Mars is much more diverse and dynamic than expected, as shown by the Swiss CaSSIS camera from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter show.
In addition, ESA scientists detect ice water just below the surface in many places, including towards the equator.
Svedhem said, "The water on Mars is above all underground, we do not find any open lake, it's frozen, so we have ice underground, and liquid water has always been considered a prerequisite for life. It does not necessarily mean that we have life there, but it is an ingredient we would need to live. "
Is there life on Mars?
Our vision of Mars is changing rapidly. Do experts therefore believe that ExoMars will find signs of life, now or in the past?
Rodionov is confident: "Yes, of course, I hope that Exomars will find traces of the existence of organic compounds on the surface of Mars." And of course, Exomars is exactly the mission that should do it. he was designed for that, "he says.
Abbie Hutty of Airbus agrees: "I think we have the best possible instruments to detect life, the most important thing is to have the drill so we can go as far as we think. still alive if it could be, and recognizable even if it was not (alive) .It is the great thing that no one has ever done. "
The planned mission will see the ExoMars rover run for about four kilometers and descend at least six times below the surface. If she found something, what would she look like?
"I think it's unlikely that it's all about little green men at this point," Meacham smiled. "It will probably be a bacterium, because we tend to find that in the driest parts of the planet, it's the most rustic form of life we know, so it's very likely that's the kind of life that we will find below the surface. "
We should know more when the ExoMars mobile platform lands in March 2021.
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