ExoMars 2016 Prepares for Launch

Europe and Russia Team Up to Search for Life on Mars 

In just a few short hours, ExoMars 2016 is scheduled to launch.

The launch is  scheduled for 09:31 UTC  on Monday 14 March from  Baikonur, Kazakhstan where preparations  are being made.

ExoMars Proton Rocket being raised into position prior to Monday's launch.Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan Copyright: ESA - B. Bethge

​ExoMars is an unmanned orbiter designed to test the Martian atmosphere for evidence that life once existed on Mars -- or may yet still.

It's the first of a two-phase approach​, originally designed to be followed by a surface rover in 2018, though financial worries may delay this follow-on mission.

ExoMars 2016, dubbed the Trace Gas Orbiter or TGO, has a suite of high-tech instruments designed to photograph the Red Planet, but will also analyze the atmosphere, specifically to look for methane.

RELATED: ExoMars 2018 surface platform finalized​

Why Methane?

According to the ESA, methane is normally destroyed by ultraviolet radiation within a few hundred years, so finding it in the Martian atmosphere implies that "it must still be produced today."

But by what?

On Earth, methane is created in a couple of ways. The first is a natural biological process, such as microbes decomposing organic matter. So -- naturally -- if you find methane, it

Which means life!​

But methane can also be created through a chemical reaction of carbon dioxide and water -- just like the Mars Oxygenator, a tool that may one day produce oxygen and methane for rocket fuel on the surface of Mars. So even if it doesn't lead to a discovery of life, it could uncover some exotic chemical and geological processes never before discovered.

Either way, it should make for some great science.​

And although traces of methane have been found my NASA rovers, the TGO will analyse Mars' methane in more detail than any previous mission -- to try and determine its likely origin. As Jorge Vago, an ExoMars project scientist, stated:

TGO will be like a big nose in space.

Another key element of the ExoMars 2016 mission is Schiaparelli, a lander "demosntrator" named after a 19th century Italian astronomer who first described the "canals" on Mars.

Schiaparelli is designed to  test heat shields and parachutes in preparation for the 2018 rover landing -- if it is not delayed -- a feat ESA says "remains a significant challenge".

Good luck ExoMars!​