15/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - ExoMars: successful launch of first probe. The European Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) space probe was successfully launched on Monday 14 March from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on board a Russian Proton launcher. The success of the launch was only confirmed by the European Space Agency (ESA) at 21.13 (CET) after the craft had completed its fourth orbit of the Earth and was about to set off towards Mars. The journey is scheduled to take until 19 October 2016. It is planned to send a second probe with a rover equipped with drilling equipment to the red planet in 2018. The aim of the ExoMars cooperative programme between the ESA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos is to try to detect the presence of life, past or present. “ExoMars is the Europe we like and the Italy we're proud of”, tweeted Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The landing demonstrator module has been named Schiaparelli, after the Italian astronomer who was the first to observe the network of straight lines on the surface of the planet which he called “canali” in Italian, meaning “channels”. (PH)