ExoMars – Trace Gas Orbiter
The European Space Agency’s mission to Mars
Objective: to search for signs of life and geological activity on the Red Planet
The CaSSiS camera: high-resolution, colour, stereoscopic images of the surface of Mars
Creotech’s role: manufacturing components for the CaSSiS camera power supply system
Mars is now a cold, dry desert, but there is much to suggest that billions of years ago it had a completely different climate. Did life ever exist on the Red Planet, or might it still exist today? This is one of the most important questions facing modern science, and the ExoMars programme is designed to help answer it.
In 2016, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) was launched towards Mars. Its mission is to study trace gases in the Martian atmosphere, which may be the result of geological as well as biological processes. On board is the CaSSiS camera, which takes high-resolution, colour, stereoscopic images of the planet’s surface. Among other things, it photographs rock formations which scientists link to the emission of these gases, and its images enable the creation of three-dimensional terrain models.
Creotech Instruments, commissioned by the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, manufactured components of the CaSSiS camera’s power supply system using surface-mount technology (SMT). This was one of the first interplanetary missions in which we took part, and an important experience which we later utilised, for example, in the JUICE mission to Jupiter.