Mars Mission Blasts Off From Kazakhstan
By KENNETH CHANG

The ExoMars 2016 mission, a collaboration between the European and Russian space agencies, blasted off from Kazakhstan on Monday.

The spacecraft, which consists of an orbiter that will measure methane and other gases in the Martian atmosphere and a lander that will study dust storms, lifted off at 3:31 p.m. local time on top of a Russian Proton rocket. The European Space Agency broadcast the launch online.

A series of burns by an upper-stage engine sent ExoMars out of Earth’s orbit and toward a path to Mars. The spacecraft is expected to arrive in October.

Three days before arriving, the lander, named Schiaparelli, after the 19th-century Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, will separate from the orbiter. It will enter the atmosphere at 13,000 miles per hour and will quickly decelerate on its way to settling down on the surface.

The main objective of Schiaparelli is to demonstrate its landing system. (The European Space Agency’s last attempt to land on Mars — the Beagle 2 spacecraft, which accompanied the Mars Express orbiter in 2003 — failed.)

Schiaparelli carries instruments to measure Mars’s atmosphere during the height of the dust storm season. Its batteries are expected to last only two to four days.

The Trace Gas Orbiter is expected to operate much longer, until at least 2022, circling Mars at an altitude of 250 miles. Its instruments will measure gases, like methane, water vapor and nitrogen, that exist in minute quantities but that could hold important clues about the possibility of life on Mars.

Methane is the most intriguing trace gas. Sunlight and chemical reactions break up methane molecules in the atmosphere. Any methane there must have been created recently, and the two possibilities for creating methane are microbes and a geological process requiring heat and liquid water.

Mars Express made tenuous detections of methane, but its instruments were not sensitive enough for definitive conclusions. NASA’s Curiosity rover also detected a transient whiff of methane in 2014.

The ExoMars spacecraft was originally scheduled to be launched by NASA, but tight budgets led the agency to back out in 2012, and the Russians stepped in. The second half of the European-Russian ExoMars collaboration — a rover — is scheduled to launch in 2018, but that mission is expected to slip to 2020.

歐俄發射火箭 奔火星探索生命

俄羅斯聯邦太空總署（Roscosmos）和歐洲太空總署（ESA）合作的「2016火星太空生物」（ExoMars 2016）探測計畫今展開，俄國質子火箭（Proton）攜載太空探測器在哈薩克成功發射升空，估七個月後抵達火星，目的在探索火星上是否有生命。

俄羅斯聯邦太空總署和歐洲太空總署的「2016火星太空生物」（ExoMars 2016）探測計畫，是為解答火星上是否有生命的兩階段探測行動的首部曲。飛行4億9600萬公里後，可望於10月抵達火星，攜載的高科技「微量氣體探測器」（Trace Gas Orbiter，TGO）將拍攝火星，並分析其空氣，且在進入火星大氣層前數天，將與名為施克亞巴瑞里（Schiaparelli）的登陸器分離，登陸器會在火星表面運行，蒐集並發回數據，但因電池只能維持二至四天，任務期非常短。

另據蘋果日報報導，TGO會環繞火星運行五年，拍攝火星地表及分析其大氣成分，特別是尋找生命跡象指標的甲烷。參與計畫的科學家瓦戈形容，TGO像太空中的大鼻子。科學家將根據甲烷濃度，確定第二階段的登陸點。屆時會用一輛大型探測車，在火星表面尋找生命跡象。

據報導，ESA科學家思維漢姆稱，將火星樣本帶回地球研究會是探索火星的下一步。雖然第二階段目前受限經費，可能被迫延至2020年，但ESA航具部門主任萊特稱：「在20到30年內，人類一定會踏上火星。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/science/mars-mission-blasts-off-from-kazakhstan.html

2016-03-16 04:46 世界日報 編譯中心