First European mission to Mars! - Watch it live!

[Dreamer128]

At http://esa.tiscali.com/

[Dreamer128]

The details;

Mars Express fact sheet


Mars Express is Europe's first mission to Mars. Indeed, it is the first, fully European mission to any planet. It consists of an orbiter, housing seven instruments for remote sensing observations of the planet, and a lander-Beagle 2-for on-the-spot measurements of Martian rock and soil. It is called Mars Express because it has been built more quickly than any other comparable planetary mission. It has taken only one year to go from engineering concept to start of development, compared to the usual five. This new streamlined development method will continue with the Venus Express mission. The approach leads to faster, more cost-effective missions. Mars Express has been developed for about half the cost of previous, similar missions.

Objectives
From orbit, Mars Express will scan the surface and atmosphere of the planet using seven principal instruments.
They will:
Search for signs of water down to a few kilometres underground.
Map the Martian surface more accurately than ever before (in colour and stereo).
Determine the detailed composition of the surface.
Determine the density and composition of the atmosphere.
Study the interaction of the solar wind with the planet.
The lander, Beagle 2, will:
Investigate the geology of the landing site.
Monitor the weather and climate of the landing site.
Like the orbiter, look for signs of life, extinct or still living

Cost
Mars Express will cost approximately Euro 300 million. This includes the launch, the spacecraft, the scientific payload (including the lander) and operations. Together with Rosetta and Venus Express, Mars Express forms a family of missions where costs are shared.

Launch date:
currently scheduled for 2 June 2003 The launch window reaches from 23 May to 21 June. Mars Express will leave Earth shortly before Earth and Mars make their closest approach to each other for 17 years. This is the best time to make the journey in terms of time and fuel economy.

Launcher:
Soyuz-Fregat rocket-upper stage combination, provided by Starsem, the European/Russian launcher consortium.

Journey
Mars Express will leave the Earth with a velocity of 10 800 kilometres per hour and cruise through interplanetary space for six months before reaching Mars. Once at the Red Planet, Mars Express will enter a large, elliptical 'capture' orbit, from which it will progress into its operational orbit. Mars Express's operational orbit is nearly polar, with an inclination of 86°. During the first 440 days of its mission, it will sweep from 11 560 kilometres altitude (apocentre) to 259 kilometres (pericentre). After 440 days, however, its orbit will change to an apocentre of 10 107 kilometres and a pericentre of 298 kilometres. This small shift is necessary to capture the best scientific data.

Planned mission lifetime
Mars Express is expected to arrive at Mars in late December 2003. It will then operate for at least one Martian year (687 Earth days). This section of the mission is funded. The spacecraft is designed to operate for a further Martian year, depending on available funds.
Beagle 2 will detach from the main spacecraft five days before entry into Martian orbit and land on the Martian surface. It is expected to work for 180 Martian days (about six Earth months).

Mission timeline
Launch: 2 June 2003
Interplanetary journey: June- December 2003
Arrival of orbiter at Mars: 26 December 2003
Beagle 2 lander release: 5 days prior to arrival of orbiter
Operational orbit reached: early January 2004
Start of commissioning and scientific measurements: early January 2004
Radar Antenna deployment: February 2004

Spacecraft
Design: Mars Express is a honeycombed aluminium box, within which all the systems and the payload are fixed. Although this shell, known as the bus, was designed especially for the mission, wherever possible, off-the-shelf components were used. Also technology designed for Rosetta was reused. Both approaches have helped to keep the cost of building the spacecraft down
Mass: 1200 kilograms in total (including 113 kilograms of payload, 65 kilograms of lander, and about 430 kilograms of propellant).
Dimensions: 1.5 by 1.8 by 1.4 metres (excluding solar panels). With solar panels extended, Mars Express measures about 12 metres across.
Industrial involvement: The prime contractor is Astrium, Toulouse (France). They are leading a consortium of 24 companies from ESA's 15 Member States and the United States. Throughout Europe, about 1000 people, both engineers and scientists, have been directly involved in the development of Mars Express.

What's on board?
Orbiter
HRSC - High Resolution Stereo Camera
HRSC will map the entire surface of the planet in 3D, colour, and with a resolution of about 10 metres. It will image selected areas of Mars at just 2 metres resolution.
Principal Investigator: G. Neukum, Freie Universitaet , Berlin, Germany, e-mail:gneukum@zedat.fu-berlin.de

ASPERA - Energetic Neutral Atoms Analyser
ASPERA will measure the way particles in Mars's tenuous atmosphere interact with the solar wind, that is, energetic particles given off by the Sun. The data will allow scientists to estimate how dense Mars's atmosphere was in the past.
Principal Investigator: R. Lundin, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden, e-mail:rickard.lundin@irf.se

PFS - Planetary Fourier Spectrometer
PFS will measure the sunlight reflected by Mars to calculate the composition of the planet's atmosphere and the way it varies with altitude. In particular, it will study the distribution of carbon dioxide and also surface-atmosphere interactions.
Principal Investigator: V. Formisano, IFSI-CNR, Rome, Italy, e-mail: formisan@nike.ifsi.rm.cnr.it

OMEGA - Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer
OMEGA will map the mineral composition of the surface of Mars in 100-metre squares.
Principal Investigator: J-P Bibring, Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay, France, e-mail: bibring@ias.fr

MARSIS - Subsurface Sounding Radar Altimeter
MARSIS is a 40-metre-long antenna that will use high-frequency radio waves to map the subsurface of Mars. It will probe the subsurface to a depth of a few kilometres.
Principal Investigator: G. Picardi, Università di Roma 'La Sapienza', Italy, e-mail: picar@infocom.ing.uniroma1.it

MaRS - Radio Science Experiment
MaRS will monitor the distortion of radio communications from Earth, due to the ionosphere and atmosphere of Mars. It will also provide insight into the gravitational field of Mars.
Principal Investigator: M. Pätzold, Institut für Geophysik und Meteorologie, Universität zu Koeln, Germany, e-mail:paetzold@geo.uni-koeln.de

SPICAM - Ultraviolet and Infrared Atmospheric Spectrometer
SPICAM will investigate the composition of the atmosphere. It will be looking for ozone and water vapour, both of which are expected to be present in small quantities.
Principal Investigator: J-L Bertaux, Service d'Aeronomie du CNRS, Verrières-le-Buisson, France, e-mail: bertaux@aerov.jussieu.fr

Lander-Beagle-2
The heart of Beagle 2 is the Payload Adjustable Workbench (PAW) which is connected to the lander through a robotic arm. The PAW contains a number of instruments for studying the composition of the surface rocks. It also contains the mole, which can burrow under rocks, and the corer-grinder, which can drill into rocks to take samples. The Gas Analysis Package (GAP) will look for the presence of life, either extinct or ongoing. It is located on the lander platform and the robotic arm will feed samples to it for analysis. Principal Investigator: C. Pillinger, Open University, United Kingdom, e-mail: c.t.pillinger@open.ac.uk

Operations
Ground Control:The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Darmstadt, Germany will be mission control. It will communicate with the spacecraft via the 35-metre dish at New Norcia, near Perth, Australia. Mars Express will communicate information from its science instruments and 'housekeeping' data. It will also relay information from Beagle 2 every time it passes over the lander

ESA Project Manager: Rudolf Schmidt (Austria)
ESA Project Scientist: Agustin Chicarro (Spain)

[Ziroc]

What is CEST? And what time in the USA (EST) would it be? I'd like to watch! This is one of MANY birds that will launch THIS MONTH!! Should be fun to watch!

[Dreamer128]

Its no right now! I'm having trouble connecting though

Im also lookig forward to this mission...I think Mars in the long run will be important to all of man Kind.

On a seperate but not too different side note...China is looking to have a Manned Moon base within the next 6 to 10 years...this will be interesting to see if they can pull it off...they expect to start launching preliminary probes next year.

Sorry I don't have links to it though..it was in print somewhere but I have no idea where I read about it now

[Djinn Raffo]

Shenzhou - Divine Mission
here is an old Guardian article about the Chinese space program MagiK.

From the article:

Chairman Mao, like the British and the Americans, was stunned when the Soviet Union launched the space age in 1957 with Sputnik 1. "How can we be considered a great power?" he asked. "China cannot even put a potato in space."
But now Chinese scientists have promised the ultimate great leap forward: a Chinese astronaut in orbit by 2005, a manned landing on the moon by 2010 - followed by a permanent lunar base to exploit the new high frontier of commerce.

"China is expected to complete its first exploration of the moon in 2010 and will establish a moon base just as we did on the North and South Poles," promised Ouyang Ziyuan, head of China's moon exploration programme as he launched the country's national science and technology week in Beijing.

After its first man in space, China plans a space laboratory, a lunar orbiter to look for valuable elements and minerals, robot landings on the moon - and then the human touchdown.

The price of space exploration is enormous. Russia and the US - the only two states to have achieved manned flight - are struggling to keep their brand-new investment, the international space station aloft. Britain abandoned its own plans for a launcher 30 years ago, and until recently refused to join Europe in developing the successful Ariane series of launch rockets.

But China has a long tradition in physics, mathematics and engineering, and its doctoral graduates have been welcomed in the US and Europe for decades. A centrally directed state, it can throw huge resources at technical problems, and it has been able to learn from 40 years of pioneering triumphs and mistakes by the USSR and the USA.

Space flight is a gamble and the stakes are high. If successful, China could have founder membership of the world's most exclusive club - a second home on the moon - as well as a powerful hand at the strategic bargaining table.

It could also partner a new generation of space entrepreneurs in a game of ultimate high finance. Groups in the US and Russia have always had plans for new industries in space. But to cash in, they first need a foothold on the moon.

China has been putting payloads into orbit since 1970, with the first launch of its Long March rocket. Since then, it has made 73 launches, 62 of them successfully. It has been putting up western satellites on a commercial basis for more than a decade. There have been setbacks. A Long March rocket with a telecommunications satellite aboard exploded on launch in 1995, killing six people. The following year another launch put a $120m Chinese satellite into the wrong orbit.

Since the beginning of the 1990s China has signalled its plans to move cautiously into manned flight. Engineers began building a space centre in Jiuquan City, in Gansu province, and in 1992 a Hong Kong-based news agency quoted an official as saying: "The launch and retrieval of the first space shuttle will take place in the new space centre and the bases in its vicinity. It will take about 10 years to accomplish this grand project."

Two Chinese "taikonauts" - went to Moscow for space training in 1996. The first spacecraft built for manned flight, Shenzhou - or Divine Mission - went up without any humans aboard, into test orbit around Earth in 1999.

In 2001, China sent a monkey, dog, rabbit and snails into space aboard Shenzhou II. And a test in March of the Shenzhou III unmanned spacecraft, with dummy astronauts aboard, was hailed "a major step forward in China's ambition to send a man in space".

Many of these developments were conducted in secret. Normal Chinese practice is to move with caution. But Prof Ouyang's statement was given national publicity yesterday on the Communist party People's Daily website. President Jiang Zemin has recently shown his personal enthusiasm for the space programme. The Beijing science and technology week is staging an exhibition at the China Century Altar - symbol of the nation's hopes for the future. Space exploration is its central theme.

Two designers from the Shenzhou III project told the conference that 12 astronauts were now undergoing intensive training. One more unmanned space flight is planned before the first manned launch.

Experts say that the Shenzhou spacecraft already provides China with a space vehicle capable of mounting a lunar programme. Previous proposals have suggested that the country's latest rockets would launch a total of 39 tonnes, including a 28-tonne Shenzhou lander.

A geologist by training who worked on China's underground nuclear tests, Prof Ouyang is a senior member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has already predicted that one of China's greatest achievements in the 21st century will be to set up a "moon city" fuelled by power from the sun - with any surplus beamed to a collecting point on Earth.

Just as the US sought psychological ascendancy with its manned lunar programme, so the Chinese leadership is being tempted by the symbolism of lunar conquest. The Chinese official news agency said last year that a moon probe would be useful in "raising national prestige and inspiring the spirit of nationalism".

Chinese scientists also predict that Mars will be the next target after the moon. A "Mars Explorer" is now on show in Beijing, modelled on Nasa's Mars Ranger.

[Stratos]

Here's a link to the project:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/

When I´m writing this I think the bird is already flying.