What makes the Mars Express special?
Mars Express is special because, by the time of its arrival, it was the mission to perform the most detailed and complete exploration of Mars ever done. For instance, Mars Express is the first mission to conduct the a thorough search for water on the Red Planet: from several kilometres below the ground, and up into the atmosphere. Mars Express is searching for traces of present or past life in Mars. No other mission has attempted to do that since the historic Viking missions, more than 25 years ago. Mars Express is also special because of the new managerial approach being used. This new approach included the re-use of existing hardware and instruments, and allowed a quicker and more cost-effective development of the mission. At the time of its development, Mars Express was built at a much lower cost than other comparable planetary missions, without compromising reliability and quality. This has been very important for ESA, since the same streamlined development method was also adopted
