Mars Express Orbiter gets a lease of life, the mission have been extended one Martian year (23 months) from early December 2005.

Great new! Also for Marsis...
Hoping next year they will release more imagery!

Reply 7:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1365

Mars Express gets a third extension, to December 31, 2009.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMACI05VQF_0.html
(And so do Venus Express and Cluster)

The Express missions may not be media stars, but it's relieving to see these rugged probes keeping our eyes open on Venus and Mars when new launches are put in jeopardy by the caprices of economy.

That is a little bit concerning, Mars Express, together with Cluster and INTEGRAL, is slated for termination at the end of December 2022. "However, [whatever this really means], ESA would like to engage in a creative process for these missions and develop innovative concepts that [...] would make it attractive for the SPC to re-evaluate their decision." What's funny is that the official announcement of the mission extensions fails to give a direct indication of such a severe decision.

Fascinating occultation of Jupiter by Deimos in February, and then Deimos in turn by Phobos in March.

Though I think the description of the distance from Mars Express in the article is off, surely by an order of magnitude, at least?

Certainly wrong, as Mars Express cannot get close to Deimos.

I think 12000 and 28000 km is probably right.

Phil

In regard to the last sentence of the article, it is important to note that Mars Express is currently only funded until the end of March 2023, further extensions are subject to ESA budget allocations at the upcoming ESA Council at Ministerial Level (CM22) in November 2022, which seem to be not so rosy in respect to space science. From the technical point of view, Mars Express is still going strong and an extension of operations even into the 2030s is feasible.

If I remember correctly, ExoMars is funded out of a separate category than the science program. This might mean that any plan to fly the ExoMars rover might be funded out of another pot of money.

Interesting, considering that MEPAG presentations as recent as May 2022 had basically written MEx off as a viable relay ("Fuel load extremely low and uncertain"). https://www.lpi.usra.edu/mepag/meetings/mep...anson_Meyer.pdf

They have corrected the distances of the Martian moons from Mars Express, however, I wonder if the date given for the Deimos occultation by Phobos is correct. According to WebGeocalc, the smallest angular separation of Deimos and Phobos observed by Mars Express was about 11 degree on 30 March 2022. The best opportunity in that month would have been on 6 March 2022 at around 22:47:55 UTC with a calculated angular separation between Deimos and Phobos of only about 0.016 degree.

EDIT: A WebGeocalc Angular Separation Event Finder search gives only 3 occultations of Deimos by Phobos observable by Mars Express in 2022: on 8 April, 30 May, and 17 August. The distances between Mars Express and the two moons during the 30 May occultation are in agreement with the corrected distances given in the article. Case closed.

Decision day is coming! Meanwhile, the Mars Express team is soliciting the support of the scientific community for the extension of the mission.

Extended life for ESA's science missions

[...] ESA's Science Programme Committee (SPC) has confirmed the continued operations of ten scientific missions in the Agency's fleet. [...] The decision was taken during the SPC meeting in Antwerp, Belgium, on 7 March. [...]

The extension of three ESA-led missions, Cluster, Integral and Mars Express, all of which have been operational since over 20 years, were in jeopardy financially, as two new major missions (JUICE and Euclid) will be joining the fleet of missions in operations this year. For all three missions, ESA received strong and well-justified requests from the scientific community to extend the missions. ESA’s scientific advisory structure (the Astronomy Working Group, the Solar System Exploration Working Group, and the Space Science Advisory Committee) reviewed the science cases and supported further limited extensions. Thanks to some significant programmatic risks (related to JUICE and Euclid) having recently been retired, the SPC agreed to extend these three missions for a limited amount of time, using part of the Programme contingency in the years 2023-2025. [...]

The science operations of Mars Express are extended until end of 2026 and the SPC also approved the indicative extension of Mars Express from 1 January 2027 to 31 December 2028, enabling support to the JAXA-led Mars Moons eXploration (MMX) mission. This will be followed by two years of post-operations; the extension to 2028 will be reviewed in 2025/2026, after MMX launch and arrival at Mars. [...]

Yahoo!!!