The European Space Agency (ESA) will release an update for the Mars Express spacecraft, which will bring huge improvements in the scientific capabilities of the orbiter.
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The space exploration mission Mars Express, conducted by the European Space Agency, started on June 2, 2003 and since then the orbiter has been exploring the surface of the Red Planet from above. The orbiter has been in operation for more than 19 years and uses its advanced underground and ionospheric sounding radar (MARSIS) to bounce low-frequency radio waves from the surface of Mars to see what’s underneath.
Researchers are exploring areas of the Red Planet, looking for groundwater and all sorts of atmospheric changes. The MARSIS instrument is a 130-foot antenna that can see up to 3 miles below the planet’s surface. The tool is built on Windows 98 and according to ESA, the upcoming software update will improve antenna performance dramatically as it will increase signal reception, onboard data processing and increase the consistency of data sent back to Earth.
“We have faced a number of challenges to improve the performance of MARSIS. Last but not least, the MARSIS software was originally designed more than 20 years ago using a development environment based on Microsoft Windows 98! ”Explains Carlo Nena, a software engineer at Enginium who helps ESA upgrade.
In addition, the major update will allow researchers to keep the MARSIS instrument turned on five times longer, as well as increase the area that the orbiter can scan, which means that the orbiter will now be able to explore larger areas faster. . Mars Express is run by ESA and the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), and according to Andrea Chicketti, MARSIS operations manager at INAF, the upcoming update is like “having a brand new instrument on board Mars Express almost 20 years after launch.”
In particular, ESA does not specify what version of Windows the Mars Express orbiter will receive, but it can be assumed that it will not be Windows 11, especially given the age of the hardware on board.
The update “will allow him to see beneath the surfaces of Mars and its moon Phobos in more detail than ever,” according to ESA
We hope that with these and other upcoming improvements, researchers will be able to quickly locate regions of Mars that have an abundance of groundwater.
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