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Context

• The European Space Agency’s ExoMars 2022 mission won’t launch in September as planned after the agency suspended all cooperation with Russia’s space program Roscosmos.

ExoMars  Mission

About

• ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) is an astrobiology programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Aim

• The goals of ExoMars are to
• search for signs of past life on Mars,
• investigate how the Martian water and geochemical environment varies,
• investigate atmospheric trace gases and their sources
• demonstrate the technologies for a future Mars sample-return mission.

Phases

Part 1

• The first part of the programme is a mission launched in 2016 that placed the Trace Gas Orbiter into Mars orbit and released the Schiaparelli EDM lander. The orbiter is operational but the lander crashed in Meridiani Planum on the planet's surface.
• The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) entered Mars orbit in 2016 and proceeded to map the sources of methane (CH4) and other trace gases present in the Martian atmosphere that could be evidence for possible biological or geological activity.

Part 2

• The second part of the programme was planned to launch in 2022, further getting delayed due to Russia- Ukraine war.

https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/esa-stops-exomars-2022-roscosmos-russia-ukraine-7827880/

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