The ExoMars mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) – aims to search for traces of life on Mars was built with the help of several european countries, and also with a partnership in Russian. Among the various contributors to the technological, Portugal will be represented with some of the companies linked to the area of aerospace engineering.
it All started when it was the month of December 2005, when the council is inter-ministerial in the various countries participating in the ESA approved a plan of financing valued at 650 million euros, for a mission of the european space within the framework of the Aurora programme.
The initial idea had as its mission the deployment of a small probe stationary and a "rover" on Mars.
The fixed probe initially designed by ESA had a weight provided
approximately 180 pounds, having the Schiaparelli currently almost 600
pounds.
The concept of mission was, in essence, similar to the design of the NASA Mars Exploration Rovers, but the focus of the robot at ESA’s science would be very different from the stipulated by the mission of NASA, it was not designed to look for biosignatures on the red planet.
In June 2007 the ESA approached for the first time to the space services the russians, offering them help for the mission Phobos-Grunt, on the moon, mars to Phobos.
In exchange, Russia would provide a ride in a rocket Proton for the launch of ExoMars, although this business has not been check.
At the end of 2007, the mission ExoMars already had the budget valued at over one billion euros and, given the increased load, there emerged the need for a launcher more powerful. The mission is reviewed and you then split in two phases of the mission.
In July 2009, NASA and the ESA have signed a joint protocol of exploitation, in which the two mills scientific would be transported to the orbit of the terrestrial through the rocket Atlas V.
it Was also established that the mission of Exomars, in 2016 would be led by ESA, while the mission of 2018 with a "rover" would be conducted by NASA.
Portuguese Technology in the mission ExoMars
Active Space Technologies
It takes a lot of patience, money, a lot of ingenuity and art to build space probes that have a mission to explore alone an “unknown space”.
For this reason, the European Space Agency does not refuse the precious help of the many partners in this epic space.
Among them is Portugal, with the participation in the construction of some equipment that is part of the exploration systems in orbit and on the martian surface from space probes.
Ricardo Patrício, CEO of the company the Active Space Technologies (AST), explains that this national company participated with a study on the composition thermal of the surface of Mars, which aims to give better information on the best places to probe Schiaparelli landing.
A thermal map constructed by the company AST is now part of the navigation system of the probe, Schiaparelli, and will be decisive to choose the best place to stay for the rest of your life.
But he would be deceiving himself who judges that the temperatures on Mars are more muted than here on Earth.
Although the planet is further away from the Sun, the temperatures range from 60 degrees centigrade to negative at the poles, and the high temperatures in ecuador, which can reach 150 centigrade – a responsibility that the CEO of the Active Space Technologies, Ricardo Patrício, says you recognize.
The first part of the european mission Exomars is now in full activity, but the several engineers working on the technologies of this program are to build the templates for stage two of the project, and the Active Space Technologies is not execção, says Ricardo Patrício.
this is mathematical algorithms pre-programmed made in Portugal, which cost, only for the mission, ExoMars 2018-2020, about two million euros, and that the AST want to see multiplied in future requests for space navigation.
HPS
But, a little before the probe Schiaparelli to touch the soil of Mars, another company with a capital luso gave the “thermal protection” to the shield that makes the entry in the rarefied atmosphere of the Red Planet.
The company called HPS, is Portuguese-German, with headquarters in the Science and Technology Park of University of Porto (UPTEC).
This company explains in a communiqué to have been responsible for the development of the part thermal Schiaparelli, the module, which lands today on the surface of the planet Mars.
THE HPS came in this european project in 2012 and was since then “in all phases of the project, from the preliminary design through qualification tests up to the integration of the hardware on the satellite”.
“because it is a mission that reaches to the soil of another planet were the necessary precautions extreme to not be biological contamination of the Earth on Mars”.
For this reason, all the thermal protections were produced in the clean room of the HPS, located in UPTEC, “in extremely high levels of cleaning and subjected to sterilization,” says the chief operating officer of the HPS, Celeste Pereira.
Celeste Pereira also notes that it took several hours of development and testing to ensure the demanding environments of mission”, namely to “ensure that the various pieces of equipment were protected from very low temperatures during the trip Earth-Mars, as well as very high during the maneuvers of entry and landing on the planet Mars”.
Critical Software
But, for the probe Schiaparelli reach Mars, another probe was responsible for the transport and ai we probe the orbital ExoMars TGO (Trace Gas Orbiter), which also had to be scheduled.
it Is precisely here that enters Bruno Carvallho, responsible for the area of space from the company Critical Software.
This Portuguese was one of the responsible for the creation of mission-critical systems, and very important, the probe ExoMars TGO), which allowed to make all the navigation space between planet Earth and Mars.
The probe ExoMars TGO that carried the capsule that contained the probe construction the Italian Schiaparelli had to go through in their journey to Mars more than 500 million kilometers, drop the probe, carrying three days before you arrive and place yourself in an elliptical orbit to the planet.
Functions are critical and of extreme accuracy that were carried out by the ship depended on always of the software created by this Portuguese company.
Bruno Carvalho works in the area of software development space going for 15 years and says that Portugal has already a great technological capacity that allows you to compete with other countries that seek to work in this area.
this is an area that is competitive and that generates many economic interests but the Portuguese says that the our country deserves to be chosen.
This mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), will seek to answer something that the scientists there are very looking for on Mars: is there life in this arid red planet in the solar system?
One of the answers to this question is the guarantee of the existence of methane gas on the planet – a gas that is naturally produced by living beings.The molecular weight of methane gas is heavier than the oxygen which causes this to be compelling you to become trapped close to the ground a planetarium.
Though the martian atmosphere to be very thin in comparison with the terrestrial, it is expected to find the presence of this gas, concentrated in the first few meters close to the ground martian, for in addition to already having confirmed the existence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars, on the part of some of the probes that have visited the planet in recent years.
This methane will help to ensure that Mars has hosted life extraterrena. Portugal is already a part of this mission that remained in the history of space exploration over land.
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