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Mars Express
European spacecraft
Mars Express, European spacecraft that mapped the surface of Mars. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express was launched on June 2, 2003, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and went into Mars orbit on December 25, 2003. Mars Express carried a colour stereo camera, an energetic neutral atoms analyzer to study how the solar wind erodes the atmosphere, a mineralogical mapping spectrometer, and atmospheric and radio science experiments. It also carried a British lander, named Beagle 2 after HMS Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin on his epoch-making voyage around the world. The 33-kg (73-pound) lander was equipped with ...(100 of 331 words)