Mars Express art print. The background is based on a real image of Mars taken by the spacecraft’s high-resolution stereo camera. Credit: Spaceship image: ESA / ATG medialab; March: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The MARSIS instrument from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, famous for its role in discovering signs of liquid water on the red planet, is receiving a major software update that will allow it to see beneath the surfaces of Mars. and his moon Phobos. in more detail than ever.
Mars Express was ESA’s first mission to the red planet. Launched 19 years ago, on June 2, 2003, the orbiter has spent nearly two decades studying the Earth’s neighbor and revolutionizing our understanding of the history, present, and future of Mars.
MARSIS – Water on the red planet
The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument on Mars Express was crucial in the search for and discovery of signs of liquid water on Mars, including an alleged 20 by 30 km (12 by 19 mile) lake. . of salt water buried under 1.5 km (0.9 miles) of ice in the South Polar region.
Operated by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Italy, and fully funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), MARSIS sends low-frequency radio waves to the planet using its 40-meter-long (131-foot-long) ). antenna.
Artistic impression of water beneath the Martian surface. Credit: Illustration by Medialab, ESA 2001
Most of these waves are reflected from the planet’s surface, but significant amounts travel through the crust and are reflected at the boundaries between layers of different materials below the surface, including ice, soil, rock, and water.
By examining the reflected signals, scientists can map the structure beneath the surface of the red planet to a depth of a few kilometers and study properties such as the thickness and composition of its polar caps and the properties of layers of volcanic rocks and sedimentary.
From Windows 98 to March 2022
“After decades of fruitful science and having acquired a good understanding of Mars, we wanted to push the performance of the instrument beyond some of the limitations needed when the mission began,” says Andrea Cicchetti, PI Deputy and Director of operations from MARSIS to INAF, which he directed. the development of the update.
ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft’s MARSIS radar instrument is used to detect features such as water beneath the surface of Mars. It has recently received a software update that substantially improves its scientific performance. In this graph, you can see the region on the surface of Mars studied with MARSIS during a pass through the Lunae Planum region. The software update reduces the speed at which the Onboard Data Storage instrument fills up, allowing it to turn on for much longer at a time and collect data in a much larger region with each pass. The area that could be studied during use of the instrument before the upgrade can be seen on the right. The area that can be studied during use is now on the left. Credit: INAF – National Institute of Astrophysics
“We have faced a number of challenges to improve the performance of MARSIS,” says Carlo Nenna, software engineer aboard MARSIS at Enginium, which is implementing the upgrade. “No less important because MARSIS software was originally designed over 20 years ago, using a Microsoft Windows 98-based development environment!”
The new software was designed jointly by the INAF team and Carlo, and is now being implemented on Mars Express by ESA. It includes a number of upgrades that improve signal reception and onboard data processing to increase the quantity and quality of scientific data sent to Earth.
“Previously, to study the most important features of Mars and to study its moon Phobos, we relied on a complex technique that stored a lot of high-resolution data and filled the memory on board the instrument very quickly,” says Andrea .
“By discarding the data we don’t need, the new software allows us to turn on MARSIS for five more times and explore a much larger area with each pass.”
“There are many regions near the south pole of Mars in which we may have already seen signs indicating liquid water in lower-resolution data,” adds ESA Mars Express scientist Colin Wilson.
“The new software will help us study these regions more quickly and extensively in high resolution and confirm if they are home to new water sources on Mars. It’s really like having a new instrument aboard Mars Express almost 20 years later of the launch “.
The Martian workhorse
Old enough to vote in many places on Earth, Mars Express continues to offer incredible science while still being one of ESA’s lowest-cost flying missions.
Mars Express continues to capture stunning images of the red planet 19 years after launch. This color-coded topographic image shows part of the marked landscape that makes up Aonia Terra, a highland region in the highlands of southern Mars. It was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express on April 25, 2022. Credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
“Mars Express and MARSIS are still very busy,” says James Godfrey, director of operations for the Mars Express spacecraft at ESA’s ESOC mission operations center in Darmstadt, Germany. “The team did a great job designing the new software, maximizing its impact and keeping the patches as small as possible, helping us continue to make the most of this veteran spaceship.”
MARSIS was developed by the University of Rome, Italy, in collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The INAF team is grateful for the support of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) through the ASI-INAF 2019–21-HH.0 contract.