January 17, 2022
Categories: ExoMars

The image captures the crater’s central uplift – raised from depth during the impact event that carved out the crater itself – and a variety of impact-related rocks, or ‘breccia’, which is essentially broken up fragments of the planet’s rocky surface cemented together by finer-grained material.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter already identified features and minerals in this crater that suggest water was once present here. Ritchey Crater is located at 309.06°E/28.13°S, just south of Valles Marineris, where TGO also just reported evidence that vast amounts of water – in the form of ice or hydrated minerals – is still present today.

TGO arrived at Mars in 2016 and began its full science mission in 2018. The spacecraft is not only returning spectacular images, but also providing the best ever inventory of the planet’s atmospheric gases, and mapping the planet’s surface for water-rich locations. It will also provide data relay services for the second ExoMars mission comprising the Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok platform, when it arrives on Mars in 2023.

More from this category:
July 15, 2014

The first launch of Angara heavy booster with a satellite will take place in 2016-2017, Roscosmos head deputy Alexander Ivanov reported. “First Angara boosters for…

full story
May 21, 2015

Russian Space Exhibition postponed due to the lack of guarantees from the British part will open in London on September 18, – British Science Museum…

full story
April 15, 2019

On April 13 the “Glonass-M” navigation satellite, created by the “Information Satellite Systems” company, was delivered to the Plesetsk cosmodrome. At present, the specialists of…

full story
April 24, 2014

This month cosmonaut candidates (Oleg Blinov, Pyotr Dubrov, Ignat Ignatov, Anna Kikina, Sergey Korsakov, Dmitry Petelin, Andrei Fedyayev, Nickolay Chub) finished one of the training…

full story
March 4, 2014

Russian space industry specialists go on with preparations for the launch of Proton-M booster with Briz-M upper stage and cluster comprising two Russian telecommunication satellites…

full story
February 3, 2022

Specialists of the Center for Operation of Ground-Based Space Infrastructure Facilities (part of Roscosmos) are preparing systems and units of the Soyuz launch complex in…

full story
March 12, 2014

Proton-M with two communication space devices of Express-AT series was rolled out and installed onto the launching pad of Baikonur spaceport, – Roscosmos reports. According…

full story
August 3, 2015

Roscosmos approved main and back-up crew of Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft to be launched to the ISS from Baikonur in September 2015. The main crew comprises…

full story