Listening to the Martian past: ISAE-SUPAERO at the heart of the ExoMars mission

Available online : Monday 24 March 2025

ESA’s ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission to explore Mars will carry a unique instrument for recording sound and atmospheric data from the planet.

The Institute has been selected by ESA and CNES for this major scientific collaboration.

The ExoMars mission is a European Space Agency (ESA) program to explore Mars for signs of past life. Scheduled for 2028, the mission will involve the Rosalind Franklin rover, designed to analyze the Martian surface for biosignatures and to understand variations in Mars’ aqueous and geochemical environment. This program represents a crucial step in the search for extraterrestrial life and in understanding the evolution of our solar system.

Researchers from the ISAE-SUPAERO research group Space Systems for Planetology and Applications are contributing to the development of instruments for collecting atmospheric and sound data during the entry, descent, and landing phases of the mission. The Institute’s recognized expertise.

A key mission for the future of Martian exploration

ESA, CNES, six French laboratories and universities are in charge of various instruments and instrumental contributions to the Rosalind Franklin rover, which will have 8 pieces of equipment on board and a drill.

ISAE-SUPAERO will develop PACIS (Platform Atmospheric Characterization Instrumentation Suite), located on the landing platform and designed to measure sound, pressure, and temperature during the critical entry, descent, and landing phases of the ExoMars probe. The PACIS microphone and atmospheric instruments will contribute to our understanding of the atmosphere and environment on Mars, collecting unique data during descent and after arrival.

Funded by ESA and CNES, this project, carried out in partnership with the University of Padova and the FMI (Finnish Meteorological Institute), marks a further step in ISAE-SUPAERO’s commitment to scientific excellence and innovation in the service of space. All these elements will be an essential prerequisite for the success of the next stages in the exploration of the Red Planet.

Planetary acoustics, expertise made in ISAE-SUPAERO

This new space scientific collaboration builds on ISAE-SUPAERO’s heritage in planetary missions, and in particular its contribution to the Perseverance rover on NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. The Martian microphone on Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument, designed and developed by a team of ISAE-SUPAERO researchers in cooperation with IRAP (Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie) and CNES, paved the way for a new approach to Martian exploration, inaugurating a new science: planetary acoustics. “The instrument developed for ExoMars embodies our ability to innovate in response to the most complex challenges of space exploration,” emphasizes David Mimoun, Deputy Director for Research.

ISAE-SUPAERO has made a significant contribution to the development of some fifteen space missions, both past and present.

Leading-edge research guarantees top-level space training

This project promotes the close synergy between research and education at ISAE-SUPAERO. The work that led to this selection by ESA is the fruit of cutting-edge research carried out in the Institute’s laboratories, in close liaison with teaching. This approach guarantees high-level training in the space sector, both in the Earth Observation and Universe Sciences stream of the engineering curriculum, and in the various courses in the Space sector. Students benefit directly from the technological and methodological advances developed for missions such as ExoMars.