![](\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2017\/03\/exomars_rover\/16873156-1-eng-GB\/ExoMars_rover_small.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\nESA\u2019s ExoMars rover (foreground) and Russia\u2019s stationary surface science platform (background) are scheduled for launch in July 2020, arriving at Mars in March 2021. The Trace Gas Orbiter, which has been at Mars since October 2016, will act as a relay station for the mission, as well as conducting its own science mission<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nChoosing the rover\u2019s landing site is a demanding and lengthy process, because it must not only be interesting scientifically but also safe from an engineering viewpoint.\n<\/p>\n \nEstablishing whether life ever existed on Mars is at the heart of the ExoMars programme, thus the chosen site should be ancient \u2013 around 3.9 billion years old \u2013 with abundant evidence of water having been present for extended periods.\n<\/p>\n \nThe rover has a drill (the dark grey box at the front in the view above) that is capable of extracting samples from depths of 2 m. This is crucial, because the present surface of Mars is a hostile place for living organisms owing to the harsh solar and cosmic radiation. By searching underground, the rover has more chance of finding preserved evidence.\n<\/p>\n \nFrom an engineering perspective, the site has to be low-lying, to allow the entry module to descend through enough atmosphere to help slow its descent with parachutes, and it must not contain features that could endanger the landing, such as craters, steep slopes and large rocks.\n<\/p>\n \nChecking that all of these requirements are met takes many experts and many years.\n<\/p>\n \nIn this case, it began in 2013, with eight proposals put forward and subsequently down-selected to four sites<\/a> in 2014.\n<\/p>\n \nBy late 2015, one site \u2013 Oxia Planum<\/a> \u2013 had been recommended as the primary focus for further detailed evaluation, with two other sites retained for discussion at a later date. That later date has arrived, and experts will this week decide whether it will be Aram Dorsum<\/a> or Mawrth Vallis<\/a> that will also be put forward to study in further detail.\n<\/p>\n \nFollowing the decision, an announcement will be posted on the ESA website. Confirmation of the primary landing site and the backup will occur only about a year before launch.\n<\/p>\n \nA number of new artist\u2019s views of the rover are now available. These include labelled views (front<\/a> and back<\/a>), a 360\u00ba visualisation<\/a>, and a new mission poster<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \nESA’s ExoMars rover (foreground) and Russia’s stationary surface science platform (background) are scheduled for launch in July 2020, arriving at Mars in March 2021. The Trace Gas Orbiter, which has been at Mars since October 2016, will act as a relay station for the mission, as well as conducting its own science mission<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nChoosing the rover’s landing site is a demanding and lengthy process, because it must not only be interesting scientifically but also safe from an engineering viewpoint.\n<\/p>\n \nEstablishing whether life ever existed on Mars is at the heart of the ExoMars programme, thus the chosen site should be ancient – around 3.9 billion years old – with abundant evidence of water having been present for extended periods.\n<\/p>\n \nThe rover has a drill (the dark grey box at the front in the view above) that is capable of extracting samples from depths of 2 m. This is crucial, because the present surface of Mars is a hostile place for living organisms owing to the harsh solar and cosmic radiation. By searching underground, the rover has more chance of finding preserved evidence.\n<\/p>\n \nFrom an engineering perspective, the site has to be low-lying, to allow the entry module to descend through enough atmosphere to help slow its descent with parachutes, and it must not contain features that could endanger the landing, such as craters, steep slopes and large rocks.\n<\/p>\n \nChecking that all of these requirements are met takes many experts and many years.\n<\/p>\n \nIn this case, it began in 2013, with eight proposals put forward and subsequently down-selected to four sites<\/a> in 2014.\n<\/p>\n \nBy late 2015, one site – Oxia Planum<\/a> – had been recommended as the primary focus for further detailed evaluation, with two other sites retained for discussion at a later date. That later date has arrived, and experts will this week decide whether it will be Aram Dorsum<\/a> or Mawrth Vallis<\/a> that will also be put forward to study in further detail.\n<\/p>\n \nFollowing the decision, an announcement will be posted on the ESA website. Confirmation of the primary landing site and the backup will occur only about a year before launch.\n<\/p>\n \nA number of new artist’s views of the rover are now available. These include labelled views (front<\/a> and back<\/a>), a 360º visualisation<\/a>, and a new mission poster<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=292776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292777,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292776\/revisions\/292777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=292776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=292776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=292776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n