Today the latest addition to the Mars mission flotilla was launched by ESA and Roscosmos. Trace Gas Orbiter was launched on a Proton rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
The news from Baikonur is that all of ‘Breeze M’ stage burns were successful. Following that, separation of the actual Trace Gas Orbiter from the Breeze M stage was successful. So now TGO is on its 7 month journey, on a Hohmann Transfer Orbit, to Mars!
TGO will follow up Curiosity’s discovery of methane in the martian atmosphere that was analysed by SAM:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6220/415
We aim to find out where methane is located near the Mars surface, I am part of the CaSSIS camera that will give stereo, colour coverage of the Mars surface, and hopefully clues as to how the methane originated.
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