Mars Express is ESA’s spacecraft that has orbited Mars since entering orbit in 2003.
The European Space Agency launched Mars Express on June 2, 2003, and it arrived at Mars in December of that year. It was ESA’s first mission to Mars and combined an orbiter with the Beagle 2 lander. Although Beagle 2 failed to establish communications after landing, the orbiter became a highly productive long-term mission.
Mars Express has studied the atmosphere, surface, subsurface, and interior of Mars. Its instruments have mapped minerals, examined polar deposits, monitored atmospheric processes, and used radar to investigate buried structures. The spacecraft also provided detailed observations of Phobos and Deimos.
The name can cause confusion with the separate ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which entered Mars orbit in 2016. Mars Odyssey is a NASA orbiter launched in 2001. Beagle 2 was not the orbiter; it was the small lander carried by Mars Express and released toward the surface.