ESA Science & Technology - Mars Express forges collaboration with Japanese Mars mission

ESA's Science Programme and ISAS are of similar size and the hope is that the collaboration will be the first of many. "We're looking to the long term. We want to base our relationship on friendship and mutual trust. For too long Europe and Japan have been looking for partners across different oceans. Now we realise that we're sitting at different ends of the same landmass," said Chicarro.

Nozomi already has significant international participation, with four of the mission's 14 scientific instruments having Principal Investigators from outside Japan. Only one of Mars Express's instruments has substantial involvement from outside Europe.

Nozomi will go into near equatorial orbit around Mars shortly after Mars Express enters polar orbit in December 2003. The presence of the two spacecraft in complementary orbits makes them ideal for joint investigations, especially of the atmosphere. Those planned at the meeting include simultaneous observations of the weather on Mars from the two vantagepoints.

Senior scientists and their post-graduate students are being chosen to join each instrument team. As the Mars Express instruments are now developed, the Japanese scientists will be involved in testing and calibration over the next few months and will contribute towards data analysis later on when Mars Express is in orbit. Nozomi has already been launched and is waiting in Earth orbit until it can make the journey to Mars in 2003. Hence European scientists on the Japanese teams will be largely involved with data reduction and processing after the spacecraft has arrived.

Nozomi and Mars Express scientists agreed to hold a workshop once a year to discuss joint progress. However, to get the collaboration off to a good start, an additional technical meeting will probably be held later this year.