Exomars

Science stands still for no one, and with a new year comes a new calendar of exciting events in spaceflight and exploration. New Atlas rounds up some of the most important milestones to look forward to in 2020.

Has life ever existed on Mars? Humankind has sent more than a dozen spacecraft to investigate, with some built to dig into the surface and others to roam its dusty terrain. The ExoMars 2020 mission will be the first to do both.

ESA's Rosalind Franklin ExoMars 2020 Mars rover is off to France for environmental and launch testing.

ESA's Rosalind Franklin Mars rover has received its full suite of instruments that it will use to seek out signs of past or present life on the Red Planet.

​​A joint venture between the ESA and Roscosmos to place a rover and science platform on Mars has hit a stumbling block, with the parachutes needed to safely lower the ExoMars 2020 module to the surface receiving damage during the latest round of testing.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has made a map of the distribution of watery minerals in the Martian surface, studied how the global dust storm affected the atmosphere, and intriguingly found very little methane, which calls into question the results of a study just last week.

The landing craft that will deliver Europe's first rover to the planet Mars has arrived for assembly and testing in Turin, Italy, and has been officially named. A key component of the ExoMars 2020 mission, the Roscosmos landing platform has been christened "Kazachok" (Cossack).

​A panel of experts has chosen Rosalind Franklin as the name for the European Space Agency’s (ESA)’s upcoming Mars rover. The vehicle is currently expected to begin exploring the Red Planet in 2021.

One of the software packages that will guide the ESA ExoMars 2020 rover on the Red Planet has passed a major test at the space agency's Planetary Utilisation Testbed. The exercise by the half-scale ExoMars Testing Rover will help the actual rover autonomously navigate Martian hazards.

When the ExoMars 2020 mission touches down on the Red Planet, it will most likely be at Oxia Planum. This area near the Martian equator was recommended for the ESA-Roscosmos rover because it provides the best chances for finding signs of life balanced against the need for a safe landing zone.

A test prototype of ESA's ExoMars 2020 Mars rover got a workout last week in Spain’s Tabernas Desert – which is odd because mission control was a thousand miles away at the Harwell Space Cluster in Oxfordshire, England.

Data returned by the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter indicates that astronauts on even short future Mars missions could face significant space radiation hazards and would be exposed to at least 60 percent of their total lifetime career radiation exposure limit.