Take a look back at the fiery blastoff of a Russian Proton rocket Monday with the ExoMars 2016 mission to examine the red planet’s atmosphere and test new European entry, descent and landing technologies.
The 191-foot-tall (58-meter) rocket took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0931:42 GMT (5:31:42 a.m. EDT) Monday with the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli lander.
Nearly 11 hours later, the rocket’s Breeze M upper stage deployed the ExoMars orbiter on a trajectory toward Mars after a series of maneuvers to build up enough energy to escape Earth’s gravity.
The ExoMars mission will arrive at Mars on Oct. 19, making it the European Space Agency’s second probe to explore the red planet.
NASA officials released never-before-seen views of a spacecraft landing on another planet Monday, showcasing multi-angle replays recorded by ruggedized high-definition cameras mounted on the Perseverance rover last week when it safely touched down on Mars.
SpaceX’s plan to send a Dragon capsule to Mars in 2018 will be the first in a sequence of unmanned commercial missions to the rust-colored world before the first voyage with humans as soon as 2024, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Wednesday.
The pace of the European Space Agency’s development of a power and propulsion module for NASA’s Orion crew capsule will likely determine when an unpiloted test flight of the spaceship and its heavy-lift rocket will take off, NASA officials said last week.
