The more we know about Mars...
THE SCHIAPARELLI PROBE made headlines in October 2016 when it crash-landed on Mars. It wasn’t a disaster, though, it was mainly a practice run for the European Space Agency’s next mission to the red planet: delivery of a craft bearing the science station and rover, scheduled for 2020. The main game of the Schiaparelli probe – the “Exomars” mission – was to deploy the mothership, the 13th of an international fleet of ships spying on Mars. Known as the Trace Gas Orbiter ( TGO), its goal is to sniff out methane, a potential signature of life. The gas has been detected by previous orbiters, the Curiosity Rover and Earth-based telescopes. But where the plumes came from was impossible to say. TGO’S instruments will pinpoint the source with a thousand-fold greater accuracy than ever before.