The Trace Gas Orbiter launch in Kazakhstan on March 14 officially kicked off the first half of the ExoMars probe. The mission is to find signs of life on Mars.
The launch is the first of two combined missions to Mars by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia's Roscosmos. The first mission included the Trace Gas Orbiter which will look for methane traces as well as other compounds that could have had biological sources.
The Schiaparelli, which is a plunge and touchdown demonstrator module, was part of Trace Gas Orbiter launch last Monday aimed for a bigger ground-based rover set to launch in 2018. The second mission will transport a drilling mechanism and other equipment for an exobiology and geochemistry research. The Schiaparelli module was named after an Italian astronomer who created maps of the Red Planet in the late 1800s.
"There is a political meaning and purpose to this mission: working together beyond national borders, beyond crises on Earth. We use a Russian launcher, with American contribution and it's a European mission," said the German Engineer and ESA head Jan Woerner.
The Monday launch was similar to an approaching near-Earth object but in reverse. Asteroid hunters were given a small window following the launch to test their imaging and tracking capabilities.
The ESA's NEO Coordination Centre conducted an international organized effort among the observatories in the Southern Hemisphere to track and image the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft. The European Space Operations Centre's Space Debris Office provided the participating observatories up-to-date of the orbiter's route.
Several astronomers were able to image the orbiter, including Sarah Roberts and Alison Tripp (Australia) and Grant Christie (New Zealand). However, astronomers Sergio Silva and Daniela Lazzaro (Brazil) captured the most vivid images of the orbiter.
In one of their images, they were able to capture discarded fragments of the Proton rocket surrounding the Trace Gas Orbiter during the upper stage. Silva and Lazzaro captured the images at the Orwell Astronomical Society, Ipswich (OASI) Observatory in Brazil.
At present, the ExoMars probe is on its way towards the Red Planet with a scheduled rendezvous on October 19 this year at approximately 16:00 UTC.
