News and Highlights

29/03/2017 4^th ExoMars 2020 Landing Site Selection Workshop: Outcome

The 4^th ExoMars 2020 Landing Site Selection Workshop was held on 27-28th March 2017 at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC).

Attendees from the Mars science community, industry and the ExoMars project presented thier detailed work to assess the scientific merits and preliminary compliance status with engineering constraints of the three candidate sites, Oxia Planum, Aram Dorsum and Mawrth Vallis. After thorough discussions, the Landing Site Selection Working Group recommended Mawrth Vallis as the second site to be evaluated in more detail, accompanying Oxia Planum. Both candidate sites would explore a period of ancient martian history that has not been studied by previous missions.

For continuing study of candidate sites in preparation for the selection of the final primary and backup site, selected scientific and engineering resources to aid site assessment are available on the landing site study pages (registration required).

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28/09/2016 ExoMars 2016 SPICE kernels

Version 1.2.1 of the operational ExoMars 2016 Kernel Dataset has been published by the ESA SPICE service, hosted at ESAC. Kernels are available to download from ftp://spiftp.esac.esa.int/data/SPICE/ExoMars2016/kernels/. Please see the release notes for details.

Notable updates include:

• TGO medium term predicted data (SPK) and Science Operations Center test data (CK) for the interval 2016 OCT 19 15:01:08.184 - 2017 JAN 24 03:17:03.102.
• Instrument kernel (IK) for DECA.
• EDM frames and test attitude kernels, for the AMELIA investigation.
• Updated ACS, NOMAD and FREND frames and instrument kernels.
• Default CKs for ACS and NOMAD.

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2018

USRA Planetary Meetings Calendar

Mars Seasons:

• 20 November 2017 - L_s = 90: MY 34 Northern Hemisphere Summer Solstice.
• 22 May 2018 - L_s = 180: MY 34 Northern Hemisphere Autumnal Equinox.