Mars Express status and highlights IKI, Moscow 11 October 2010 Olivier Witasse, on behalf of the entire Mars Express project and scientific teams

Mars Express Launch June orbits completed The mission is healthy, the operations are smooth 500 peer-reviewed publications The archive is regularly populated

Title : Page 3 A broad range of scientific research on MEX Investigation of gravity anomalies, and time variations of the gravity field Investigation of subsurface structures Surface investigation: geology, mineralogy, seasonal effects, climate Atmospheric science: composition, density, dynamics, thermal, clouds, climate Upper atmosphere: Interaction with the solar wind, escape, exosphere, thermosphere, ionosphere, airglow and aurora Study of the Phobos and Deimos moons: Mass, volume and density determination, subsurface structure, surface characterization, interaction with the solar wind, ephemerids.

Mission extension status Firm up to the end of 2010; Operations in : to be confirmed in November; Operations in : scientific request being evaluated. Decision expected in November.

Science case Acquisition of a data set on the atmosphere over a full solar cycle (10-12 years), and at solar maximum; Monitoring of time dependence of evolving processes (ice and frost, atmospheric cycles, etc..); Exploration of Phobos; Improvement of the map of methane by 25 % in spatial resolution; Radar sounding of the North Polar Cap under much better illumination conditions (end of 2014); Improvement of the HRSC high resolution global coverage (up to ~ 70-75%), especially in areas poorly covered such as the Southern and Northern mid- latitudes; Study of the deepest night ever at pericenter (-50º solar elevation angle in 2014).

Scientific highlights papers in 2010 ! March 2010: Phobos closest flyby campaign March-April : Special aeronomy campaign June 2010: Detection of hydrated minerals in the Northern plains, paper in Science led by the OMEGA team May 2010: Aurorae are back July 2010: Methane map, paper in press in PSS by the PFS team

March 2010 Phobos campaign (1) Phobos nadir-channel image from HRSC, acquired during orbit 7915 (7 March 2010). Resolution: about 4.4 meters per pixel Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum) Courtesy G. Neukum

Preliminary results of the gravity experiment. The x-axis displays The time, in seconds, from closest approach. The curve shows, in grey, the frequency jump of the MEX radio signal due to the Phobos Gravity. The blue curve is a model, assuming Phobos being homogenous. The team is now analysing the small differences between the grey and blue curves, which contain the information on the inhomogeneities inside Phobos. March 2010 Phobos campaign (2)

Aeronomy campaigns

Martian aurorae Probability to be on a close field lines (Brain et al. 2009) May 2010: the longest event ever recorded ~30 sec.

Published in “Science”, June 2010: ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have discovered hydrated silicate minerals in the northern lowlands of Mars, a clear indication that water once flowed there. Lyot crater is 210 km in diameter. The blue lines show the swathes of data taken by the Mars Express OMEGA. The small red boxes correspond to CRISM measurements. The asterisks show the locations where hydrated minerals were detected. The OMEGA swathes were acquired in December 2004 (left) and March 2008 (right). The CRISM observations were taken between January 2008 and April Credits: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/JHU-APL/IAS. Wet era on early Mars was global

Methane map (Northern Fall) Geminale et a;. 2010, in press

Recent HRSC web releases (1) Melas Chasma

Recent HRSC web releases (2) Orcus Patera

Concluding remarks Excellent scientific productivity, lots of results every months Good archive for the scientific community Ready to go until end of 2014 Ready to work with MSL, Yinghuo-1, PhSRM, MAVEN Ready to pave the way for the 2016 ESA-NASA orbiter