I was very excited to read about the discovery published last week by NASA’s Curiosity rover of the seasonal variation in the amount of methane in Mars’ atmosphere. Curiosity found that the average methane concentration varied from 0.24 parts per billion (ppb) in the northern hemisphere winter to around 0.65 ppb in the summer. This… Continue reading Methane on Mars
Tag: esa
Schiaparelli on Mars -updated
As most of you will already know, and much to our disappointment, the Schiaparelli probe failed to land successfully on Mars last Wednesday. The plan was that when it entered the Martian atmosphere, the spacecraft would immediately begin to slow down to 1700 km/h as a result of the friction caused by the atmosphere hitting its heat-shield. When it reached… Continue reading Schiaparelli on Mars -updated
Schiaparelli’s landing on Mars
Update 7 February 2026 Sadly the Schiaparelli Spacecraft failed to land successfully on Mars. It hit the ground at 300 km/h and would have been destroyed on impact. The post below was published on 13 October 2016, six days before the failed landing. On 14 March 2016 the European Space Agency used facilities at Baikonur… Continue reading Schiaparelli’s landing on Mars
ExoMars TGO: Tracking Methane in the Martian Atmosphere
6 February 2026 - This an update of an orginal post first published in 2016 On 14 March 2016 the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on a seven month journey to Mars. When it arrived at the red planet, its key sciencetific objective was to study how the distribution of… Continue reading ExoMars TGO: Tracking Methane in the Martian Atmosphere
Explaining Science 