ESA's ExoMars Successfuly Lifts Off From Baikonur (esa.int)

vikingpower writes: The European Space Agency's second mission to Mars, ExoMars, was successfully launched from the Baikonur launch pad today. ExoMars will search for traces of life, either past or present, on the Red Planet, and is the precursor to a more full-fledged mission to Mars in 2018, comprising a rover. It consists of an orbiter and of Schiaparelli, a lander built by European industry and scheduled to land in October this year. Both missions are cooperations between ESA and RosKosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency. If one of them met their ultimate goal -- proving there is or was life on Mars — the excitement here on Earth would be unimaginable. Mark Whittington adds a link to The Guardian's coverage and a bit of detail: The Russian-made launch vehicle lobbed a probe into space, the Trace Gas Orbiter, that will enter orbit around Mars later in 2016 and search for methane in the Red Planet's atmosphere. Methane can have a number of sources, but one of them is the waste product of microbial life. Both the Mars Express orbiter and the Mars Curiosity rover have detected some measure of methane, which could be produced by geological processes as well.

Comments

Re:if ESA finds mars life

[vikingpower]

OP here. The same thought occurred to me, while watching the Proton M rocket being launched. As it blasted off, I got that combination of itch and cold shivers I now know, as an experienced engineer, to be the foreboding of something grand. You know - I was a teenager when the Viking landers first visited Mars, and that planet seemed an utterly remote, hostile place then. Not to speak of the gas giants. Then Voyager 1 & 2 began sending their astonishing images of Jupiter; I remember being knocked off my feet by them. Then came Cassini, and its marvelous "pale blue dot" image gently forced us to re-think our situation here on Earth once more. And over the years, Mars seemed to edge ever closer, at least in our perception, up to the point where teams are already simulating long stays in isolation, including communication delays, to prepare for a human visit. Mars, in my mind, is now a bit like the Gobi desert: I'll never go, but it seems close enough, even nearly reachable. But... if life were found on Mars, either past or present, it would cause a revolution in our minds and in our thinking compared to which the one caused by the Vikings and Voyagers would appear very, very minor, however important those were in their own right. Most importantly, such missions do not only tell us about neighbouring worlds: they feed us back information on our selves, on who we are and where we stand. And that is well worth all the tax payers' money - that is invaluable.