BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — A joint European-Russian mission aiming to search for traces of life on Mars left Earth’s orbit Monday at the start of a seven-month unmanned journey to the Red Planet, space agency managers said.
The Proton rocket carrying the Trace Gas Orbiter to examine Mars’ atmosphere and a descent module that will conduct a test landing on its surface had earlier launched from the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe at 0931 GMT.
The spacecraft detached from its Briz-M rocket booster just after 2000 GMT before beginning its 496-million-kilometer (308-million-mile) voyage through the cosmos, the European Space Agency said.
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Source: The Kooza
