Progress report
In April 2019 the TGO completed its first year of full-time scientific observation, and astronomers couldn’t be happier with what they saw, especially as they were able to exploit the rare opportunity of observing a global dust storm up close. “We are delighted with the first results from the Trace Gas Orbiter,” says Svedhem. “Our instruments are performing extremely well and even within the first few months of observation were already providing exquisite data to a much higher level than previously achieved.”
Using the onboard spectrometers astronomers were able to observe Mars’ upper atmosphere as the dust storm enveloped the planet and observe how hydrogen was leaving the atmosphere.
However, Mars’ methane – the main gas that the orbiter is trying to trace – appears even more mysterious after the annual announcement.
The most accurate global analysis yet of the potential biosignature has shown the upper limit of methane’s abundance in the atmosphere to be between 10 and 100 times lower than previous detections. This upper limit indicates that 500 tonnes of methane was emitted over a 300-year predicted lifetime of the molecule when considering atmospheric destruction processes alone, which is considerably low.
In news much closer to the surface, the TGO data was pivotal in creating an incredible map of subsurface water, which could have interesting implications for understanding the ancient history of surface water on the Red Planet, as well as future human exploration and colonisation. The spacecraft’s neutron detector – the Fine-Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) – has already produced one of the most exquisite maps of shallow, subsurface water ice and hydrated minerals in just one Earth year.
In the most recent news, it isn’t just Earth where COVID-19 is having a negative effect, as in March 2020 the ESA decided to put four missions on temporary standby. These four were the TGO, the Solar Orbiter, Mars Express and the four-satellite Cluster mission. This was due to staffing restrictions during uncertain times, but they were woken back up on 2 April 2020 to resume usual service.