On September 20th, Miss Aine O’Brien (right), Rupert Dean (left) and Zuza Markovska (centre) travelled to the Royal Aeronautical Society headquarters in London to attend the latest European Space Agency (ESA) lecture titled ‘ExoMars: The Voyage’. It was given by Mr Don McCoy, who has been the ExoMars project manager for 10 years, before which, he managed and participated in various other ESA projects.
ExoMars is a cooperative project which concentrates its resources in hopes to address the ageless question of whether life has ever existed on Mars. The mission was founded in hopes to discover new information regarding the Martian environment and to display new space exploration technologies.
The primary goal of the event was to give a clear insight and overview on the project’s timeline and infrastructure. After a brief introduction to the project and some of its focal historical pinpoints, Mr. McCoy explained how the two missions within the project work and what the future might hold for them. The lecture was purposely well timed, as both of their mission modules (Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and an Entry, Descent and landing demonstrator Module (EDM), known as Schiaparelli, will be making entry in the Martian atmosphere around this time next month. Alongside these advances the organisation is planning future missions to safely extract and bring back Martian soil and atmospheric samples.
