{"id":7938,"date":"2018-03-13T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T07:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=7938"},"modified":"2018-03-13T07:00:03","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T07:00:03","slug":"exomars-mission-methane-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/science-mct\/space\/exomars-mission-methane-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"Search for methane on Mars starts as ExoMars Mission reaches final orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>After a year of extremely dangerous aerobraking, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will reach its final orbit and start collecting data from the atmosphere of Mars. Onboard the Orbiter is an instrument developed by academics from The Open University. Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery (NOMAD) will \u2018sniff\u2019 the atmosphere for methane \u2013 a gas that could have been produced by living organisms.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Co-Principal Investigator of NOMAD and Senior Lecturer at The Open University, Dr Manish Patel, explains:<\/p>\n<h2>\u201cAny mistakes could be catastrophic\u201d<\/h2>\n<div id=\"attachment_7949\" style=\"width: 156px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7949\" class=\"wp-image-7949 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ExoMars-2016_Manish-Patel-Holding-UVIS-180x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"146\" height=\"243\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ExoMars-2016_Manish-Patel-Holding-UVIS-180x300.jpg 180w, https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ExoMars-2016_Manish-Patel-Holding-UVIS.jpg 615w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 146px) 100vw, 146px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7949\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr Manish Patel<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cAerobraking is a \u2018free\u2019 way to get into the right orbit. Typically when a spacecraft arrives at Mars, it is travelling so fast that its orbit is stretched; we could fire the thrusters, effectively slamming on the brakes, to slow down into a smaller orbit, but this requires huge amounts of fuel and on any space mission, fuel equals mass, which equals money.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead we drag the spacecraft through the thin layer of the outer atmosphere to slow the spacecraft down; the force on the spacecraft is really low \u2013 about the pressure of a piece of paper resting on your hand \u2013 so it has taken nearly a year to slowly reduce its orbit. Of course, when travelling at extremely high speeds, any mistakes could be catastrophic.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Mapping the planet<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cThe orbit of the ExoMars TGO is the key to the success of our mission. We need a circular, continued low orbit to map the whole planet and continue its orbit. This way, if any trace gases are in the atmosphere, we\u2019ll detect them. Also, the low altitude is great to photograph the surface of Mars as the closer we are, the clearer our view will be.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Mission progress<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In April 2018,\u00a0the\u00a0<em>ExoMars TGO<\/em>\u00a0began transmitting photographs of the surface from its camera system.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ounews.co\/science-mct\/space\/mars-an-ice-filled-crater-visible-on-surface\/\">Learn more about what it has discovered on the surface<\/a>\u00a0of Planet Mars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a year of extremely dangerous aerobraking, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will reach its final orbit and start collecting data from the atmosphere of Mars. Onboard the Orbiter is an instrument developed by academics from The Open University. Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery (NOMAD) will \u2018sniff\u2019 the atmosphere for methane \u2013 a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[692,846,1378,1975,2081],"class_list":["post-7938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space","tag-dr-manish-patel","tag-exomars","tag-mars","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}