Mars Express

European Space Agency, Press Information Note No 22-98
Paris, France 19 June 1998
Hurry along please, for the Mars Express

Any scientists wanting to send instruments to the surface of the planet Mars have until 3 July to offer a small lander that might be carried aboard the European Space Agency mission Mars Express. The selection of a lander, if any, will then be the last stage in defining the scientific payload of Mars Express, which is intended to go into orbit around the Red Planet at the end of 2003. The choice of instruments for the orbiting spacecraft was recently ratified by ESA's Science Programme Committee. This month ESA is inviting tenders to build the spacecraft from three industrial competitors, Alenia/Aerospatiale, Dornier and Matra-Marconi, who have already studied the mission. The project must be fully defined in time for the Science Programme Committee to finally confirm Mars Express.

Why the hurry? The deadline is set in the form of a favourable launch opportunity just five years from now. The positions of Earth and Mars in their orbits at that time will mean that a spacecraft can reach Mars more quickly, carrying a greater weight of instruments, than from any other launch date in the next decade. A decision to proceed taken towards the end of 1998 would leave less than five years to create, test and launch a complex spacecraft and meet that deadline. Most judgements about Mars Express and its instruments have therefore to be made in advance if the engineers and scientists are to make sure that everything is ready for lift-off in June 2003.

For more details visit the Mars Express web site

European Space Agency, Press Release No. 47-98
Paris, France 5 November 1998
Mars Express wins unanimous support

All fourteen national delegations in the European Space Agency's Science Programme Committee have backed the project to send a spacecraft to Mars in 2003. Support for Mars Express, as this exciting mission is called, is qualified by concern about the long-term budget of ESA's science programme. At its meeting in Paris on 2 and 3 November, the Science Programme Committee made its approval of the implementation of Mars Express conditional on sufficient funding for the science programme and no impact on previously approved projects. ... Development of the spacecraft will now proceed swiftly, to meet the deadline of an exceptionally favourable launch window early in June 2003. Mars Express will go into orbit around Mars at Christmas 2003.