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Malargüe station mosaic
A mosaic depicting ESA’s new 35m deep-space tracking station at Malargüe, Argentina, composed of several hundred low-resolution Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) images acquired by Mars Express. On 18...
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First data via Malargüe station: Mars as seen by VMC
Marking its inauguration, ESA’s Malargüe tracking station receives Mars Webcam image. An image of the enigmatic Red Planet acquired by ESA’s Mars Express on 15 December 2012 was downloaded via ESA’s...
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Jewels in the sky: Observing Mercury & Mars on 8 February
Mercury is not an easy target to observe. The innermost planet in our Solar System is never further away from the Sun than 30 degrees. It is either trailing the Sun and disappearing below the horizon...
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How ExoMars/TGO gets to where it’s going
(UPDATE – SEE BELOW) ExoMars, the next departure for the Red Planet, is set to lift off from Baikonur on 14 March 2016, and the teams here at ESOC are in absolute high gear getting ready to go. The...
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The speed with which we get to Mars
(UPDATED 1.04) Scroll down to the bottom of the post for the final review of responses. (UPDATED 24.03) We got a query earlier this week via Facebook from a past participant (thanks, Massimiliano!) in...
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Rover driving done!
On 29 April 2016, ESA astronaut Tim Peake controlled, from the International Space Station, a rover nicknamed Bridget at Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage as part of an international experiment to...
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[UPDATED] Mars Express chats with Curiosity: Practice makes perfect
UPDATE 16 June: MEX Deputy Spacecraft Operations Manager James Godfrey just emailed to report that yesterday’s MSL overflight seems to have gone rather well! “We have received good telemetry from the...
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#BigBurn complete
Following a 52-min firing of its powerful engine this morning, ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is on track to arrive at the Red Planet in October. The initial analysis by the flight dynamics experts...
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Mars weather & Schiaparelli
We saw a tweet this past week from @GNU_Ninja, asking if dust storms might affect the entry, descent and landing (EDL) of the Schiaparelli demo landing module on the Red Planet’s surface on 19 October....
View ArticleFollow Mars arrival live
We won’t be updating the Rocket Science blog very often in the coming days for Mars arrival. There will be regular live updates in the main ESA website via https://www.esa.int/mars_live. To follow the...
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Keeping MEX warm
Today’s post was contributed by Luke Lucas, a Mars Express spacecraft operations engineer at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre. Read to the bottom for more info and registration for the upcoming Open...
View ArticleSkimming an alien atmosphere
After the textbook-perfect arrival of ESA’s ExoMars orbiter, mission controllers are preparing for the ultimate challenge: using drag from the Red Planet’s atmosphere to lower the spacecraft into its...
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Aerobraking: So far, so good
Aerobraking progress as of 22 March To date, periapsis passage speed reduced by 33 cm/sec Still to go: 99,967 cm/sec There’s news from the ExoMars/TGO mission control team at ESOC following the first...
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TGO short summer break
On 25 June, the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will suspend its aerobraking campaign until the end of August due to Mars’ conjunction with the Sun. Trace Gas Orbiter at Mars Credit: ESA/ATG medialab With Mars...
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Mars Express — from worry, to water
In 2004, a year after Europe’s first mission to Mars was launched, the flight dynamics team at ESA’s operations centre encountered a serious problem. New computer models showed a worrying fate for the...
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Protecting Mars Express during coronavirus outbreak
In response to the Covid-19 outbreak, people across the globe are being asked to work from home where possible in order to limit personal contact and reduce the further spread of the infection. As of...
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