{"id":8517,"date":"2018-04-26T16:17:51","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T16:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=8517"},"modified":"2018-04-26T16:17:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T16:17:51","slug":"mars-an-ice-filled-crater-visible-on-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/science-mct\/space\/mars-an-ice-filled-crater-visible-on-surface\/","title":{"rendered":"Mars and the ice-filled crater on its surface"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>An ice-filled Martian crater is visible in the first photographs of Mars transmitted from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ounews.co\/science-mct\/space\/exomars-mission-methane-mars\/\">After a year of extremely dangerous aerobraking<\/a>, the ExoMars TGO began transmitting photographs of the surface from its camera system,\u00a0known as CaSSIS (Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System).\u00a0The first photograph taken by the ExoMars TGO from 400km above the surface shows the rim of an ice-filled crater called Korolev, which is located at a high latitude in the northern hemisphere of the planet.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8520\" style=\"width: 1060px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8520\" class=\"wp-image-8520 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/ounews.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/CaSSIS-1050x255.jpg\" alt=\"The ExoMars Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System, CaSSIS, captured this view of the rim of Korolev crater. Credits: ESA\/Roscosmos\/CaSSIS\" width=\"1050\" height=\"255\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8520\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A view of the rim of Korolev crater<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The UK Space Agency has contributed \u20ac287 million to the overall ExoMars Mission and \u20ac14 million to the instruments over 13 years, which includes \u00a3370,000 for The Open University to develop the spacecraft\u2019s instrument operations.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>&#8220;A major step forward in our understanding of the seasons on Mars&#8221;<\/strong><\/h2>\n<div id=\"attachment_6142\" style=\"width: 196px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6142\" class=\" wp-image-6142\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/NOMAD_Dr-Manish-Patel-450x600.jpg\" alt=\"Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of STEM, Dr Manish Patel\" width=\"186\" height=\"248\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6142\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of STEM, Dr Manish Patel<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Senior Lecturer at The Open University, Dr Manish Patel, is a member of the CaSSIS team; he said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe images that CaSSIS is beginning to return are simply fantastic. To see the quality of the colour in these first images is a testament to the hard work of the CaSSIS team in getting the instrument to Mars on TGO.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis image heralds the start of a great mission. CaSSIS has proven it is going to generate plenty of exciting images over the mission duration and provide a major step forward in our understanding of the seasonal cycles at work on Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Is there life on Mars?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The aim of the ExoMars TGO Mission, which <a href=\"https:\/\/ounews.co\/science-mct\/space\/ou-mission-mars\/\">launched in 2016<\/a>, is to develop an understanding of one of the great unanswered questions of modern space science\u00a0\u2013 whether the planet Mars has ever supported life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An ice-filled Martian crater is visible in the first photographs of Mars transmitted from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). After a year of extremely dangerous aerobraking, the ExoMars TGO began transmitting photographs of the surface from its camera system,\u00a0known as CaSSIS (Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System).\u00a0The first photograph taken by the ExoMars TGO [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8523,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[390,692,846,861,1727,1904,2081],"class_list":["post-8517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space","tag-cassis","tag-dr-manish-patel","tag-exomars","tag-faculty-of-stem","tag-planet-mars","tag-research","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8517","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=8517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}