The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) was launched on 14 March 2016 and was successfully inserted into Mars' orbit in November 2016. After several orbit maneuvers including a 12-month aerobraking phase it reached its final, 400-km altitude and near-circular orbit on

Long-term observation of the thermal structure of the Martian atmosphere by thermal sounding from orbit was in focus of the attention of many missions to Mars. The data collected from the Viking Infrared Thermal Mapper experiment onboard the Viking Orbiters (

Aspects of epitaxially grown indium antimonide (InSb) on InSb substrates (InSb-on-InSb) by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) for the 2D focal plane arrays fabrication process have been described. The epitaxial growth offers possibility for complex structure production, and then such structures suppose more effective control of the thermal generation charge carriers as the detector temperature is raised above 80 K. Investigations of mid-wave infrared (MWIR) 320256 FPAs with 30 μm pitch and 640512 FPAs with 15 μm pitch based on InSb-on-InSb layers have shown high performance: the average detectivity at T = 77 K more than 21011 cmW-1Hz1/2, the average value of noise equivalent temperature difference (NETD) with a cold aperture of 60o at T = 77K was in the range of 10–20 mK. High quality thermal imaging images were obtained in real time mode.

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