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Orbit countdown for Europe's Mars craft going ``perfectly''

Posted on: Tuesday, 23 December 2003, 06:00 CST

BERLIN (AP) -- European space officials said the Mars Express craft was ``perfectly on course'' Tuesday toward the Red Planet, giving them confidence for a critical Christmas Day maneuver to fire it into orbit -- key to Europe's first mission to explore whether life ever existed on the planet.

In preparation, mission control in the west German city of Darmstadt sent the first orbit-related commands to the craft Tuesday. The mission's other component is a probe that is due to touch down on Mars early Dec. 25 European time as well.

Mars Express, which will relay data from the Beagle 2 probe and perform experiments of its own, was on track as it sped through space in the final hours of a nearly seven-month, 155 million kilometer (97 million mile) flight to Mars.

``It's perfectly on course,'' mission control spokesman Bernhard von Weyhe said. The more precise the course, the lower the likelihood of problems when controllers fire the engine to send the craft into orbit, he added.

``The mood is concentrated but relaxed'' at mission control, he told The Associated Press by telephone.

Once in orbit, the craft is meant to send back 3-D overhead pictures of the surface and scan for underground water with a powerful radar.

For its part, the 67-kilogram (143-pound) Beagle 2 is to parachute through the Martian atmosphere, bounce to a soft landing on inflatable bags, flip open, then start transmitting a signal that tells controllers it has safely touched down.

The first chance to pick up the signal will be when NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft passes overhead early on Christmas Day in Europe.

Also on Dec. 25, scientists at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in London will have a chance to train its radio telescope on Mars in an attempt to pick up the signal.

If both options fail, Odyssey will have a daily chance to pick up the signal on its orbit until Mars Express makes its planned first contact with the probe on Jan. 3.

The Beagle 2 probe, named for the ship that carried naturalist Charles Darwin on his voyage of discovery in the 1830s, will conduct experiments by scratching the surface with a robotic arm to test for signs of organic matter. It is expected to transmit its first pictures from Mars to mission control in early January.

Scientists believe that Mars, which still has frozen water in its ice caps, might have once had liquid water and suitable conditions for life, but lost them billions of years ago. It is believed that water may also still exist as underground ice.

The European mission is the first search for signs of life on Mars since two U.S. Viking landers probed the planet in 1976 but sent back inconclusive results. Of 34 unmanned American, Soviet and Russian missions to Mars since 1960, two-thirds ended in failure. Japan this month abandoned a mission to determine whether Mars has a magnetic field after its Nozomi probe failed to hit planetary orbit.

(tc)

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