The European Space Agency has announced details of the second phase of the ExoMars mission in 2020.
Comprising two science elements, the mission will introduce a rover and a surface platform for Martian exploration.
During the mission, the rover will scout for life and organic materials across Mars, while the surface platform will stay stationary.
To be managed by Roscosmos and the Space Research Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, the surface platform will study the landing site's outer environment.
Given a life of one Earth year, the surface platform will be backed by instruments and sensors and will have a mass of 827.9 kilograms (1,825.2 pounds) covering a scientific payload of 45 kilograms (99 pounds).
Probing Life On Mars
According to ESA, the main mandate of the ExoMars program is to investigate whether life ever existed on Mars.
The ExoMars program has two missions. The first involves the Trace Gas Orbiter with an entry, descent and landing demonstrator Module, named Schiaparelli. The former was launched on March 14, 2016 and was in news recently for the crash of Schiaparelli.
Now the new details are about the second mission wherein a rover will be launched in 2020.
Main Priorities
According to ESA, the priorities on the surface platform investigations will involve climate monitoring, context imaging as well as a series of atmospheric investigations.
The surface platform instruments will also be examining the subsurface water distribution along with the exchange of volatile elements and compounds between the red planet's surface and atmosphere. The internal structure will also be studied via geophysical investigations.
The on-board instruments will also detect and monitor the planet's radiation. The measurements will be compared to those taken by the Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector on the Trace Gas Orbiter.
European-led Instruments
There is good support for the Mars mission from the European scientific community. For the ExoMars 2020 mission, they sent nine proposals to ESA after a call in March.
The ESA, on its part, approved six European elements in 2015 that included two European-led instruments and four sensors for the Russian-led instruments.
The Lander Radioscience experiment or LaRa and the Habitability, Brine Irradiation and Temperature package or HABIT are the two European-led instruments that will be on the surface platform.
LaRa will delve into the planet's internal structure for precise measurements of its rotation and orientation. This will be done by studying two-way Doppler frequency shifts between the Earth and the surface platform. This will expose variations in angular momentum resulting from the redistribution of masses, such as when ice migrates from the polar areas to the Martian atmosphere.
HABIT will focus on water vapor in the atmosphere with the impacts coming from seasonal variations in the ground, UV radiation environment and air temperatures.
Other sensor packages from the European side will track pressure, plasma environment, humidity, dust and local magnetic fields.
Aftermath Of Schiaparelli Crash
Meanwhile, it has been noted that ESA's new update has come days after a high-resolution image was released by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, revealing the area where the Schiaparelli module crashed.
A section of experts attributes the Schiaparelli crash to software breakdown on the on-board computer. The ESA claims that the images with a dark spot of 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) across were a crater created by the 660-pound object when it hit the ground with a huge speed of several hundred miles per hour.
