Mars Express in the context of Atmosphere of Mars

The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) serves as the main mission control centre for the European Space Agency (ESA) and is located in Darmstadt, Germany. ESOC's primary function is the operation of uncrewed spacecraft on behalf of ESA and the launch and early orbit phases (LEOP) of ESA and third-party missions. The Centre is also responsible for a range of operations-related activities within ESA and in cooperation with ESA's industry and international partners, including ground systems engineering, software development, flight dynamics and navigation, development of mission control tools and techniques and space debris studies.

ESOC's current major activities comprise operating planetary and solar missions, such as Mars Express and the Trace Gas Orbiter, astronomy & fundamental physics missions, such as Gaia and XMM Newton, and Earth observation missions such as CryoSat2 and Swarm.

SHARAD (Mars SHAllow RADar sounder) is a subsurface sounding radar embarked on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe. It complements the MARSIS radar on Mars Express orbiter, providing lower penetration capabilities (some hundred meters) but much finer resolution of 15 meters in free space.

SHARAD was developed under the responsibility of the Italian Space Agency (ASI, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana), and provided to JPL for use on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft in the frame of a NASA/ASI agreement which foresees exploitation of the data by a joint Italian/US team. The INFOCOM dept. of the University of Sapienza University of Rome is responsible for the instrument operations, while Thales Alenia Space Italia (formerly Alenia Spazio) designed and built the instruments. SHARAD operations are managed by INFOCOM from the SHARAD Operation Centre (SHOC), located within the Alcatel Alenia Space facilities in the suburbs of Rome.

2001 Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and a thermal imager to detect evidence of past or present water and ice, as well as study the planet's geology and radiation environment. The data Odyssey obtains is intended to help answer the question of whether life once existed on Mars and create a risk-assessment of the radiation that future astronauts on Mars might experience. It also acts as a relay for communications between the Curiosity rover, and previously the Mars Exploration Rovers and Phoenix lander, to Earth. The mission was named as a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, evoking the name of his and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Odyssey was launched April 7, 2001, on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and reached Mars orbit on October 24, 2001, at 02:30 UTC (October 23, 19:30 PDT, 22:30 EDT). As of March 2025, it is still collecting data, and is estimated to have enough propellant to function until the end of 2025. It currently holds the record for the longest-surviving continually active spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth, ahead of the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (served 14 years) and the Mars Express (serving over 20 years), at 24 years, 1 month and 22 days. As of October 2019 it is in a polar orbit around Mars with a semi-major axis of about 3,800 km or 2,400 miles.