European spacecraft will try to find evidence of life on Mars

A European spacecraft programmed to sniff out atmospheric evidence of life on Mars has blasted into space.

Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) was launched into orbit by a Russian Proton heavy-lift rocket to begin a seven-month, 300 million-mile journey to the Red Planet.

ExoMars 2016 is the first phase of an historic €1.2 billion joint European-Russian mission to search for biochemical “fingerprints” of past or present life high above Mars and on its surface.