The Montana del Fuego (Mountain of Fire) region in Lanzarote, Canary Islands was once used to give a real life view of a Moonlike surface to early astronauts. Now the Atacama desert in Chile is being used to field-test Bridget, ESAs Mars rover due to launch in 2018. Instead of it being a joint ESA/NASA mission it is now a joint ESA/ROSCOS (Russia Space Agency) mission after NASA pulled its share of the funding. Britain is the second largest contributor to the Exomars programme overall and is the biggest contributor to the Mars Robotic Exploration Preparatory programme (MREP). Control of the MREP is based at Harwell, UK.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 07:26:57 +0000