Expert criticises failure to take part in Mars mission

IRELAND’S FAILURE to participate in an ambitious mission to find life on Mars is a missed opportunity, one of Europe’s leading space scientists will say in a public lecture tonight.

Though a member of the European Space Agency (ESA), Ireland is one of only three countries out of 17 in the agency that has opted out of the Exomars mission, which is scheduled to be launched in 2016.

Prof John Zarnecki, a team leader on the mission, says Exomars, which involves landing a rover on the surface of the Red Planet, will be the most ambitious project ever undertaken by the ESA.

The rover, which has the working title Bridget, will be bigger and will be able to travel further than either of the Nasa rovers Spirit or Opportunity. It will contain an array of scientific instruments and will be able, for the first time, to dig into the soil of Mars to find evidence of past or present life.

The mission is budgeted at just under €1.1 billion and Ireland’s share of the funding costs would be about €25 million based on our relative gross domestic product.

Prof Zarnecki has been one of the lead scientists on several of the ESA’s successful missions most notably the Giotto mission to Halley’s Comet in the 1980s and the highly successful Huygens probe, which touched down on Saturn’s giant moon Titan four years ago.

The onboard computer software for the Huygens space probe was developed by Captec, based in Malahide, Co Dublin.

“When Huygens landed on Titan, Ireland’s flag was there, but it won’t be on Mars. Ireland remains an affluent country despite the recession. The money involved is a drop in the ocean. It would not be spent on Mars, but in Ireland on developing new technologies which can bring all kinds of benefits,” said Prof Zarnecki, who is giving a lecture tonight at Trinity College Dublin.

The the presence of water and organic molecules in Titan’s atmosphere are conducive to the possibility of life. Recent research that found geysers on another one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, and a possible ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa indicates there may be life elsewhere in the solar system other than on Mars, he said.

“We are finding more and more niches in the solar system which could be conducive to simple life and on Earth, we are finding that life is much tougher than we thought. The range of environmental parameters between which life can survive is much bigger than we thought.”