The project started in 2012, and involved the Portuguese company “at all phases of the project from the preliminary drawings to qualification tests and the integration of the hardware on the satellite”, the company said.
“As the mission is to reach the soil of the other planet, extreme precaution had to be taken that there was no contamination from Earth to Mars. This meant that all the heat shields were produced in the HPS clean room, with extremely high levels of cleanliness and they were then sterilised”, the company added.
The European probe was successfully launched on 14 March and its journey to Mars took about six months It is the first time the European space industry has gone to the red planet with Portuguese technology.