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After months of simulations, flight controllers at European Space Operations Center, ESOC, in Darmstadt, Germany, conduct final phase of training in the runup to the ExoMars-2016 launch in March 2016. Click to enlarge. Credit: ESA

The first image taken by the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System, CaSSIS, on the TGO orbiter on April 14, 2016. The instrument imaged randomly selected portion of the sky close to the southern celestial pole.
The picture shows the result of taking one frame, turning the camera's rotation mechanism, and then taking another. By subtracting the two frames, a series of bright and dark spots are seen, all equally offset from each other, demonstrating that these are positive and negative images of the same stars.
The field-of-view is 0.2 degrees in the horizontal direction, and is a subset of a larger image, extracted for this purpose to show the stars at a reasonable size. Click to enlarge. Credit: ESA

On June 13, 2016, CaSSIS camera onboard ExoMars took first picture of the Red Planet with a resolution of 460 kilometers per pixel. The Tharsis region of Mars, home to the planet's largest volcanoes, faces the spacecraft in this view. Credit: ESA

The MarsTem sensor is located in the body of the Schiaparelli module, an area that is not warmed during the journey to Mars. Temperatures in that enclosure can vary, as can be seen by comparing this graph to measurements taken in April. The temperatures measured by MarsTem contrast with the 5°C - 20°C measured in the warm compartment where the electronics boxes are housed. Click to enlarge. Credit: ESA

Mission of ExoMars-2016

On March 17, the "Launch and Early Orbit Phase" of the ExoMars-2016 mission was declared completed. The team responsible for the flight moved from the main room at ESOC in Darmstadt to a smaller room, where facilities would be shared with ESA's other deep-space missions, the agency said. During the next phase, lasting until April 24, 2016, all systems onboard TGO, including the power, communications, startrackers, and guidance and navigation, were to be tested and commissioned by ESOC and ESAC.

Previous chapter: Early operations of ExoMars-2016

Opening for business

On March 17, the "Launch and Early Orbit Phase" of the ExoMars-2016 mission was declared completed. The team responsible for the flight moved from the main room at ESOC in Darmstadt to a smaller room, where facilities would be shared with ESA's other deep-space missions, the agency said. During the next phase, lasting until April 24, 2016, all systems onboard TGO, including the power, communications, startrackers, and guidance and navigation, were to be tested and commissioned by ESOC and ESAC.

The commissioning of the scientific instruments and NASA’s Electra radio relay system was scheduled for April. On April 7, 2016, Roskosmos announced that the ACS instrument suit on the TGO orbiter had been successfully powered up on April 5. Each of three spectrometers in the package went through 10 trial sessions without any problems, the agency said. On April 6, at 09:25 Moscow Time, the FREND detector was also powered up and operated during the subsequent eight-hour communications session. According to Roskosmos, all operational modes of the instrument showed good performance.

Engineers from Thales Alenia Space were also expected to check all systems aboard the Schiaparelli lander. During this period, ESOC was to conduct daily communications sessions with the spacecraft during daylight hours in Darmstadt via the New Norcia station in Australia with a backup support via Malargue.

Due to Mars' position below the ecliptic plane, ground stations in the Southern Hemisphere were in perfect location for providing constant link with the Mars-bound spacecraft, ESA said.

Cruising to Mars

On April 7, 2016, ESA ground controllers activated high-resolution camera onboard ExoMars and acquired first images of random areas in the sky, confirming that the instrument and its pointing mechanism had been working well.

The cruising phase of the mission officially starts in May and characterized by reduced activities with only three communications sessions scheduled each week. During the period, teams at ESOC will conduct a series of ultra-precise navigation measurements known as "delta-DOR", for Delta-differential One-Way Ranging. This advanced technique uses signals received from quasars deep in our Milky Way galaxy to correct the radio signals received from ExoMars, resulting in an extremely precise position determination. Results will be used to calculate the upcoming midcourse correction maneuver (also called the deep-space maneuver).

In June, the science control centre at ESA’s establishment near Madrid, Spain, started working with the instrument teams at their various institutes, and the Roskosmos' science operations center, to perform a mid-cruise checkout of TGO’s instruments.

On June 8, the ExoMars Science Ground Segment team at European Space Astronomy Center sent a series of commands to the spacecraft via New Norcia ground station. They aimed to test autonomous science operations without an intervention from the ground.

The so-called mid-cruise checkout of the TGO and Schiaparelli was officially scheduled to take place from June 12 to June 17, 2016.

On June 13, after covering less than half of its 500-million-kilometer trajectory to Mars and still 41 million kilometers from the Red Planet, the TGO took its first test image of its destination, using its CaSSiS camera.

From June 16 to June 17, ground controllers repeated tests aboard the Schiapparelli lander with the use of its DREAMS sensors. They measured the environmental conditions inside the lander, both in the warm compartment where the electronics are housed and in the central area of the module where the sensors are situated. "The measurements are all perfectly in line with what is expected," according to DREAMS Principal Investigator, Francesca Esposito, from INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy, as quoted by ESA. Unlike similar initial tests conducted on April 8 and April 9 through direct communications with the lander, the latest trials ran autonomously, according to a command sequence uploaded to the spacecraft during the previous week.

Next chapter: ExoMars-2016 deep-space maneuver

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Page author: Anatoly Zak; Last update: October 14, 2016

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