Mars Express is ESA’s first exploration of Mars. Launched 19 years ago on June 2, 2003, the orbiter spent nearly 20 years studying Earth’s neighbors and revolutionizing our understanding of Mars’ history, present and future.
The MARSIS instrument on Mars Express is critical for finding and finding signs of liquid water on Mars, including a suspected 20-by-30-kilometer lagoon buried 1.5 kilometers below the South Pole. Operated by the Italian National Astronomical Institute (INAF) and fully funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), MARSIS uses its 40-meter antenna to transmit low-frequency radio waves to Earth.
Most of these waves reflect off the Earth’s surface, but there are also plenty of waves that pass through the Earth’s crust and reflect at boundaries between layers of different materials below the surface, including ice, soil, rock and water. By examining the reflected signals, scientists can map the structure of the Red Planet to depths several kilometers below the surface and study properties such as the thickness and composition of its polar ice caps and the nature of volcanic and sedimentary rock layers.
Andrea Cicchetti, MARSIS Deputy PI and Operations Manager, who leads INAF, said: “After decades of fruitful science and a deep understanding of Mars, we wanted to push the performance of the instrument beyond some of the limitations required at the start of the mission”.
Carlo Nenna, Enginium MARSIS in-vehicle software engineer, who is implementing the upgrade, said: “We faced many challenges in improving the performance of MARSIS. Not least because the MARSIS software was originally designed over 20 years ago, using Microsoft-basedWindows98 development environment”.
The new software, co-designed by the INAF team and Carlo, is now being implemented on Mars Express by ESA. It includes a series of upgrades that improve signal reception and onboard data processing to increase the quantity and quality of scientific data sent to Earth.
“Previously, to study the most important features on Mars, and to study its moon Phobos, we relied on a sophisticated technique to store large amounts of high-resolution data and quickly fill the instrument’s onboard memory,” Andrea said. Throwing away the data we don’t need, the new software allows us to improve MARSIS real-world runtime by a factor of 5 and explore a larger area with each pass.”
Colin Wilson, ESA’s Mars Express scientist, added: “There are many areas near the south pole of Mars where we may have seen signals indicative of liquid water in the low-resolution data. The new software will help us Study these regions faster and more extensively at high resolution and confirm if they are home to new water sources on Mars. It’s really like having a brand new Mars Express vehicle nearly 20 years after its launch instrument”.
