The British-assembled rover would launch on a Russian rocket in August 2020 and land on the Red Planet eight months later.
It is being designed with the ability to drill up to 2m below Mars' dusty terrain to look for evidence of microbial activity.
Dr David Parker is Esa's director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration. He said member-state delegations to the agency had been expressing strong support for the project in the run-up to the Lucerne gathering.
"The rover remains scientifically compelling because there is no other mission planned to go below the surface of Mars which is damaged by radiation and which would destroy any past or present life," he told BBC News.
Image copyrightUKSAImage captionUK science minister Jo Johnson will be at the centre of the negotiations in Lucerne
The six-wheeled robot is the second mission in a two-step venture that Europe is conducting with the Russians.
The first phase has just seen a satellite to study Mars' atmosphere go into orbit around the planet, and a disc-shaped probe called Schiaparelli try to make a demonstration landing on its surface.
But to be in such a position, the six-wheeled vehicle will need the nod of ministers in Lucerne.
Ahead of this council, Esa and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, have conducted a thorough review of the project's technical status, to establish that all the mission's hardware can be made ready in time.
The required equipment goes beyond just the rover and a suite of scientific instruments. It includes also a "cruise ship" to carry the vehicle to Mars (this will come from Germany) and the mechanism to land the robot on the surface (a major Russian contribution).
"There has been intense technical work by the project members, including the industrial team led by Lavochkin (Russia) and Thales Alenia Space (Italy), which has now established an adequate schedule margin for launch at the overall system level and within the pieces of the system; so, the rover and the carrier, and so on," explained Dr Parker.
Image copyrightESAImage captionArtwork: A satellite and demonstration lander arrived at Mars last month. The lander crashed
It has been recommended that in order to shorten the timeline on what had previously been proposed, all the different elements will now be sent to an experienced facility in Toulouse, France, for final integration and testing - and only afterwards go to the launch site at Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
Originally, final integration and testing was to be done at the spaceport.
It is on the basis of the positive status report delivered this week to member state delegations that the funding request will now go forward to ministers.
The little over €400m includes more than €300m for industry with the rest to cover Esa's internal costs.
These include preparing the mission control centre that will command the rover on the surface of Mars.
'Dumbed-down' rover
But additional to all this money, member states will have to provide at some future point the funds to support the surface operation of the vehicle - assuming it gets down safely.
The expectation is that the robot will explore the Red Planet for at least 218 Martian days; hopefully much longer.
The two leading Esa countries in the ExoMars rover project are Italy and the UK. Both have indicated they will be offering substantial financial support at the Lucerne meeting.
But it will require others in the 22-nation organisation to dig deep as well.
Image captionAutonomous navigation would enable the rover to do more science
Ministers will be discussing a great swathe of programmes in Switzerland, including continued participation in the space station and the development of future Earth observation satellites.
For some nations, these alternative projects will be more important to them. Full commitment to ExoMars is not guaranteed, therefore.
And even if all the funds are forthcoming, some issues of contention will no doubt persist.
For example, there is currently an ongoing argument centred around the rover's use of autonomous navigation - the ability of the vehicle itself to plot the best path across the surface of Mars once instructed to go to a particular location.
This feature - a UK development - was long considered an integral part of the mission, but has now been removed from the current design on the grounds of cost.
Researchers though are likely to continue to press for its reinstatement because a robot that drives quickly and efficiently can do much more science in the time available - never mind the clear industrial spin-out potential from such technology.
Quelle: BBC
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Update: 30.11.2016
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Mars probe returns first pictures
Image copyrightESA/ROSCOSMOS/EXOMARS/CASSIS/UNIBE
Europe's and Russia's new satellite at Mars has sent back its first images of the planet.
This must be circularised over the coming year before the mission can begin full science operations.
But scientists have taken the opportunity of some close passes to the planet in recent days to check out the TGO's instrumentation.
Image copyrightESA/ROSCOSMOS/EXOMARS/CASSIS/UNIBEImage captionA structure called Arsia Chasmata on the flanks of one of the large volcanoes, Arsia Mons. The width of the image is around 25 km
TGO passed over a region called Hebes Chasma at its closest approach, just 250km from the Martian terrain.
"We saw Hebes Chasma at 2.8 metres per pixel," said Nicolas Thomas, the camera's principal investigator from the University of Bern, Switzerland.
"That's a bit like flying over Bern at 15,000km/h and simultaneously getting sharp pictures of cars in Zurich."
TGO sensors NOMAD and ACS also came through their early tests successfully.
These are the sensors that will make a detailed inventory of Mars' atmospheric gases.
In particular, they will go after the components that constitute less than 1% of the planet's air - chemical species such as methane, water vapour, nitrogen dioxide, and sulphur dioxide.
Methane is the main focus. From previous measurements, its concentration is seen to be low and sporadic in nature. But the mere fact that it is detected at all is really fascinating.
The simple organic molecule should be destroyed easily in the harsh Martian environment, so its persistence - and the occasional spikes in its signal - indicate a replenishing source of the gas.
The speculation is that it could be coming from microbial life somewhere on the planet.
It will be CaSSIS's job to look for possible geological forms on the surface that might tie into methane sources. A fourth instrument, FREND (successfully tested in recent days, too), will sense hydrogen in the near-surface. This data can be used as a proxy for the presence of water or hydrated minerals.
This again is information that could yield answers to the methane question.
Seeing TGO perform so well should at the very least give the politicians a warm feeling as they push through their difficult discussions.
Image copyrightEMANUELE SIMIONIImage captionThe first CaSSIS stereo reconstruction of a small area in Noctis Labyrinthus. The image gives anQuelle: BBC---
New Mars orbiter sends back stunning photos of the red planet
A new satellite orbiting Mars just sent home some amazing new images of the red planet's crags and cliffs.
The Trace Gas Orbiter — part of the joint ExoMars mission run by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia — beamed back the images gathered on Nov. 22, during the spacecraft's first close flyby of the world.
Some of the new photos — spliced together in video form — show the details of the Martian surface when the spacecraft was only 235 kilometers (about 146 miles) from the planet's surface. Others were taken when the spacecraft was flying thousands of kilometers from Mars.
The flyover video shows craters, mountains and dark streaks dotting various regions, including one known as Arsia Chasmata, near the large Martian volcano known as Arsia Mons.
Caption
The crater near Mars' equator.
IMAGE: ESA
But perhaps the most stunning image shows a crater within the rim of a larger crater near Mars' equator, according to the ESA.
The new photos were taken as part of an instrument test for the spacecraft, which successfully made it to Mars on Oct. 19.
“We are extremely happy and proud to see that all the instruments are working so well in the Mars environment, and this first impression gives a fantastic preview of what’s to come when we start collecting data for real at the end of next year,” Håkan Svedhem, Trace Gas Orbiter scientist, said in a statement.
The ExoMars mission as a whole is designed to hunt for signs of life on the red planet. The Trace Gas Orbiter itself is built to sniff out gases in the atmosphere like methane that could indicate either extinct or living life on Mars.
The orbiter launched to Mars with the Schiaparelli lander, however, Schiaparelli failed in its attempt to softly touch down on the red planet. Due to a malfunction with its navigation system, the lander ended up crashing into the planet's surface.
In 2020, the ESA and Russia are planning to launch another ExoMars mission that is expected to deliver a rover and landing platform to the planet's surface.
The next mission is designed to drill beneath the surface of Mars and search for signs of life.
Quelle: Mashable
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Update: 6.12.2016
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Title Phobos in 3D
Released 06/12/2016 3:00 pm
Copyright ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS
Description
A red–blue anaglyph image of Phobos composed from the stereo pair acquired by the ExoMars orbiter’s Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) on 26 November 2016. The image should be viewed using red-blue 3D glasses.
