Mars Express - Studying the Atmosphere and Climate

The Mars Express orbiter will carry instruments that will study the red planet's atmosphere in great detail. Looking for trace gases might help us answering the question whether water (and life) once existed on Mars, and why it disappeared. 7-minute A-roll with split audio (English commentary/international sound) and 20-minute B-roll with clean international sound.

The video includes the following:

00:29 Studying the Atmosphere and Climate on Mars

01:01 Interview with Vittorio Formisano, IFSI (Istituto di fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario) Frascati, Italy.

01:24 Mars Express PFS instrument: Planetary Fourier Spectrometer

01:41 Mars images and video

02:24 Spacecraft Mars Express orbiting Mars, making with PFS

02:50 Vittorio Formisano, IFSI, explains that PFS will study the Mars atmosphere

03:37 PFS in orbit around Mars and explaining PFS and how it works

04:40 Vittorio Formisano, IFSI, explains the different bands observed

05:21 IFSi building and the testing of PFS. Vittorio Formisano explains the testing on Earth

06:21 Three other instruments on Mars Express: ASPERA-3 (Analyser of Space Plasmas and Energetic Atoms), SPICAM (Spectroscopy for Investigation of Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Mars), and MaRS (Mars Radio Science).

06:28 The Energetic Neutron Analyser developed at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna will concentrate on solar wind

06:50 Stas Barbarash, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, explains how it works

07:34 Images and animation of Mars and Mars Express mission

07:50 Stas Barbarash explains further

08:02 Mars Express is not only spacecraft will bring ASPERA to Mars. The instrument will also fly on the Japanese Nozoma mission. Mars Express will follow a polar orbit while Nozoma will follow an equatorial orbit, making them complementary

08:28 The end