Artist’s impression depicting the separation of the Schiaparelli module from the Trace Gas Orbiter, and heading for Mars. Image credit: D. Ducros / ESA.
ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will arrive at Mars later today, and will enter orbit around the planet. The ExoMars Schiaparelli module will land in a flat area in Meridiani Planum, close to the equator in Red Planet’s southern hemisphere.
Full coverage of TGO arrival and Schiaparelli landing will be streamed live from the main control room of ESO’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, starting after 9:00 a.m. EDT (6:00 a.m. PDT, 1:00 p.m. GMT, 3:00 p.m. CET).
“The TGO orbiter is in great shape and ready to swing into orbit around Mars” said ExoMars mission controllers at ESOC.
“The most critical moment so far in TGO’s journey will be today’s Mars orbit insertion burn – the long (134 min) engine firing that will slow the spacecraft down sufficiently to be captured into Mars orbit,” added Thomas Ormston, a spacecraft operations engineer at ESOC.
“The burn will be performed autonomously by the orbiter, based on commands uplinked beforehand by the control team.”
“Around half an hour before the burn starts, currently set for 9:04:47 a.m. EDT (6:04:47 a.m. PDT, 1:04:47 p.m. GMT, 3:04:47 p.m. CET), the spacecraft will begin turning around to point its big main engine toward the direction of travel.”
“As this is happening, the large 2.2-m high gain antenna on the TGO will be locked into a safe ‘boost position’ for the burn. As this doesn’t point it at Earth, we will temporarily lose contact with the spacecraft. Also at almost the same time, the solar arrays will rotate and also lock into their safe boost position. Finally the orbiter will start reconfiguring its radios to send a beacon signal through its Low Gain Antenna.”
“When this radio reconfiguration is complete, the orbiter will start sending out this ‘carrier only’ signal.”
“The signal will be acquired by NASA’s big 70-m dish in Canberra, Australia and that will let the team on ground know that the orbiter is there. Critically it should also show a jump in frequency caused by Doppler shift as the orbiter fires its engine, allowing us to monitor the progress of the burn even without telemetry data.”
The Schiaparelli lander is programmed to wake up at about 9:37 a.m. EDT (6:37 a.m. PDT, 1:37 p.m. GMT, 3:37 p.m. CET) for its landing demonstration mission.
“Since its successful separation on October 16, Schiaparelli has been free-falling toward Mars. At the moment the lander is asleep, save for a timer that will wake it up just before it arrives at the top of the Martian atmosphere today, October 19,” Ormston said.
“The purpose of Schiaparelli is to teach us and provide experience with the technology Europe needs to land on Mars.”
“That’s why, no matter what happens during the descent, it is critical to hear as much as possible about every step of the journey so we can maximize our learning from Schiaparelli.”
“There is a cooperative international ‘listening in’ campaign ready to monitor signals from the landing module as it conducts the critical entry, descent and landing sequence today, leading to touch down and the start of surface science at about 10:48 a.m. EDT (7:48 a.m. PDT, 2:48 p.m. GMT, 4:48 p.m. CET),” the mission controllers added.
“The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India will listen from Earth, while a fleet of NASA and ESA orbiters listen from Mars orbit.”
