The European Space Agency ESA has launched its first planetary probe - Mars Express - on its journey to explore our red neighboring planet. The Mars Express spacecraft lifted off on June 2, 2003 from the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz Fregat booster. Mars Express is the most recent in a series of missions to Mars and opens up a new era of intensive research on the red planet. Scientists expect to obtain important new data on the planet's geology, mineralogy and atmosphere. The greatest and most ambitious challenge is the search for traces of earlier life on Mars. Equipped with high-precision scientific instruments, the spacecraft will explore the planet's atmosphere, surface and sub-surface layers. Its primary task, however, is the high-resolution 3D color mapping of the Martian surface.
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