On 3 June the European Space Agency (ESA) celebrated the tenth anniversary of the launch of the spacecraft Mars Express.

The ceremony, held in ESA’s Darmstadt Operations Center (Germany), stressed the mission’s main feats, such as providing new information on the mineral composition of its surface to reflect Mars’s geological history.

Mars Express, launched back in June 2003, has been orbiting the red planet since late last year and has by now come up with a host of discoveries. This first European mission to Mars has sent back striking high-resolution, 3D, color images of the Martian surface. Onboard the spacecraft was the first radar instrument that has ever overflown Mars; its subsurface probes (a trailblazing measurement feat in Mars exploration) have shown up underground ice deposits.

The Mars Express tasks entrusted to GMV have been diverse and date right back to the start of the mission, from mission analysis during the feasibility phase right through subsequent development. GMV also took on responsibility for deployment of the orbital mechanics system plus operational support for same to ensure correct mission execution, especially in the target Mars orbit acquisition phase.

The mission, which has now been extended several times, has found mineralogical proof of the presence of water in liquid state throughout the history of Mars; it has also made a detailed study of the density of the planet’s crust. It was the first ever satellite to detect the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere, doing so from its orbit. It has been a trailblazer in terms of the observation of aurorae at medium latitudes; it has furnished estimates of the Martian atmosphere’s leak rate and has studied the Martian moon Phobos from close up.