#Mini orbiter by planet time series#

At this point its main motor will fire, providing the deceleration needed to acquire a highly elliptical transition orbit.

#Mini orbiter by planet time series#

Meanwhile, the Mars Express probe proper will have performed a series of manoeuvres through to a capture orbit. This crucial phase in the mission will last just ten minutes, from entry into the atmosphere to landing. Three airbags will soften the final impact. With its weight down to 30 kg at most, it will land in an equatorial region known as Isidis Planitia. It will enter the Martian atmosphere on Christmas day, after five days' ballistic flight.Īs it descends, the lander will be protected in the first instance by a heat-shield two parachutes will then open to provide further deceleration.

The 60 kg capsule containing the tiny lander does not incorporate its own propulsion and steering system and will be released into a collision trajectory with Mars, on 20 December 2003. Mid-journey correction of its trajectory is scheduled for September 2003.įollowing reactivation of its systems at the end of November, Mars Express will get ready to release Beagle 2. During this period, the spacecraft will contact Earth only once a day. Once all payload operations have been checked out, the probe will be largely deactivated. Mars Express will then travel away from Earth at a speed exceeding 30 km/s (3 km/s in relation to the Earth), on a six-month and 400 million kilometre journey through the solar system. Two days from now, the probe will perform a corrective manoeuvre that will place it in a Mars-bound trajectory, while the Fregat stage, trailing behind, will vanish into space - there will be no risk of it crashing into and contaminating the Red Planet. All on-board systems are operating faultlessly.

The probe is pointing correctly towards the Sun and has deployed its solar panels. Contact with Mars Express has been established by ESOC, ESA's satellite control centre, located in Darmstadt, Germany. We can be very proud of this and of the speed with which have achieved this goal', said David Southwood, ESA's Director of Science witnessing the launch from Baikonur.

'Europe is on its way to Mars to stake its claim in the most detailed and complete exploration ever done of the Red Planet. One hour and thirty-two minutes later the probe was injected into its interplanetary orbit. An interim orbit around the Earth was reached following a first firing of the Fregat upper stage. The launcher lifted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on 2 June 2003 at 23.45 local time (17:45 GMT). It set out on its journey to Mars aboard a Soyuz-Fregat launcher, under Starsem operational management. The probe, weighing in at 1120 kg, was built on ESA's behalf by a European team led by Astrium. It will also deploy Beagle 2, a small autonomous station which will land on the planet, studying its surface and looking for possible signs of life, past or present. This first European Space Agency probe to head for another planet will enter an orbit around Mars, from where it will perform detailed studies of the planet's surface, its subsurface structures and its atmosphere. The European Mars Express space probe has been placed successfully in a trajectory that will take it beyond the terrestrial environment and on the way to Mars - getting there in late December 2003.