Tag Archives: ExoMars 2020 rover

Europe to Mars — and back!

Posted on May 27, 2019 by rburnham

Europe has been in orbit around Mars for more than 15 years and is almost a year away from launching its first rover mission, but ambitions are already running high to go one step further: returning a sample from the … Continue reading →

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ExoMars rover PanCam filter set

Posted on May 27, 2019 by rburnham

This may look like a collection of colourful contact lenses and in some respects there are some similarities: these are the filters through which the ExoMars rover – Rosalind Franklin – will view Mars in visible and near infrared wavelengths. … Continue reading →

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Hunting for biosignatures in volcanic rocks

Posted on May 20, 2019 by rburnham

[Editor’s note: From a paper by Magnus Ivarsson, Therese Sallstedt, and Diana-Thean Carlsson recently published in Frontiers in Earth Science.] Morphological Biosignatures in Volcanic Rocks – Applications for Life Detection on Mars The exploration of Mars is largely based on comparisons with … Continue reading →

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ExoMars: Mars calling

Posted on March 26, 2019 by rburnham

An exciting new competition is giving citizens of planet Earth the opportunity to get their voices to Mars in the next phase of the ExoMars programme. The ExoMars rover and platform will launch to the Red Planet in 2020. The … Continue reading →

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ExoMars rover landing platform gets a name

Posted on March 21, 2019 by rburnham

The platform destined to land on the Red Planet as part of the next ExoMars mission has arrived in Europe for final assembly and testing – and been given a name. An announcement was made by the Russian State Space … Continue reading →

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Defining the goals for collecting Mars samples

Posted on March 7, 2019 by rburnham

Returning samples from the surface of Mars has been a high-priority goal of the international Mars exploration community for many years. Although randomly collected samples would be potentially interesting, they would not be sufficient to answer the big questions that … Continue reading →

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Seeing Mars with 2020 vision: Jezero Crater and Oxia Planum

Posted on March 7, 2019 by rburnham

Both NASA and ESA hope their next Mars rovers will find evidence that life once thrived on Mars, but they have different strategies to reach this goal. Their landing site choices reflect this difference. Engineers are assembling two ambitious rover … Continue reading →

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ExoMars 2020: FiT for Mars

Posted on February 28, 2019 by rburnham

Rovers are versatile explorers on the surface of other planets, but they do need some training before setting off. A model of Rosalind Franklin rover that will be sent to Mars in 2021 is scouting the Atacama Desert, in Chile, … Continue reading →

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ExoMars rover named for Rosalind Franklin

Posted on February 7, 2019 by rburnham

The ExoMars rover that will search for the building blocks of life on the Red Planet has a name: Rosalind Franklin. The prominent scientist behind the discovery of the structure of DNA will have her symbolic footprint on Mars in … Continue reading →

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ExoMars rover software passes ESA Mars Yard driving test

Posted on January 17, 2019 by rburnham

Navigation software destined for the ExoMars 2020 mission to the Red Planet has passed a rover-based driving test at ESA’s ‘Mars Yard.’ ESA’s ExoMars rover will drive to multiple locations and drill down to two metres below the surface of … Continue reading →

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