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Oxia Planum has been recommended for the landing site of the ExoMars 2018 mission

The European Mars mission in 2018 will land on the site identified by Prof. Cathy Quantin-Nataf and her team. Their choice of Martian landing site, named Oxia Planum, was confirmed by the European Space Agency (ESA) on 21 October.

The ESA's 2018 mission is part of the ExoMars programme to answer one of the outstanding scientific questions of our time - whether life ever existed on Mars. Initially eight landing sites were proposed to ESA in 2014, following an open call for landing site proposals. To find the best spot, the team from Lyon developed a software to analysed large amounts of data collected by previous orbital missions.
Published on October 27, 2015 – Updated on March 9, 2016