Mars Express launch today

mikerich writes "The European Space Agency and the Russian Space Agency will launch the Mars Express spaceprobe today using a Soyuz-Fregat out of Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Launch is scheduled for 17.45 UT (18.45 BST), so far all preparations have gone smoothly and the forecast is excellent. The launch will be streamed over the Web by ESA. Mars Express consists of two components, a large Martian orbiter which will be searching for sub-surface water and studying the Martian atmosphere. Its seven science packages have been built by teams from Europe, Russia, the United States, Japan, and China. Amongst the science packages is a radar for studying geological structures. Mars Express will map most of the planet in high-resolution colour stereoscopic 3D and perform a high-resolution mineralogical survey of the planet. Mars Express is also carrying the tiny Beagle 2 lander designed by a team led by Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University. Beagle 2 is Britain's first planetary space probe and designed specifically to look for life using the most advanced techniques currently available. For those in the UK, the story of Beagle 2 is being told on BBC 2 on Monday 2nd June at 23:20." Dan B. writes "The BBC is running an article on the European 'Mars Express', Europe's first interplanetary rocket. This is the first of three probes heading to the Red Planet this Summer, as it nears it's closest point from the Earth in thousands of years."

Comments

Two space probes enter a bar...

[Trurl's Machine]

One of the recent Mars probes was lost due to a simple math error in metric/Anglosaxon unit conversion. That was NASA's blunder. I wonder what sort of blunders will result from this British/ESA/Russian/Japanese/American/Whatever cooperation...

Re:Most intense period of planetary exploration ev

[LiquidCoooled]

Not content with screwing up our atmospehere with junk, mankind once again shows his inate ability to devistate the natural unblemished landscape of other worlds.

Scientists should think about the consequences of their actions, and give as much thought to the cleanup operation as to the getting there. (Sounds a little like programmers and documentation ;))