[kach22i]

ExoMars 2016 bound for Mars after smooth Launch on Proton/Briz-M
March 14, 2016
ExoMars 2016 bound for Mars after smooth Launch on Proton/Briz-M – ExoMars | Spaceflight101

ExoMars 2016 has been sent on its way to Mars on Monday after a day-long ascent mission atop a Proton-M/Briz-M launch vehicle taking the heaviest craft to visit Mars three times around planet Earth before being injected onto its Trans-Martian Trajectory...................

The multi-billion Euro ExoMars project is a collaboration between the European Space Agency and the Roscosmos State Corporation for a pair of missions – the first in 2016 to fly an orbiter and landing demonstrator to Mars, and the second in 2018 or 2020 to deliver a rover and instrumented lander to the surface to look for signatures of past and present life as the first mission with this explicit goal. ..............

Initially starting out as a project between ESA and NASA, the mission went through a number of designs of different orbiter and rover combinations before it became clear that the U.S. could not finance its side of the project. ESA and Roscosmos then partnered up for the two ExoMars missions, also leading to the switch to the Proton rocket.....................

..................lasting until Briz-M was over central Kazakhstan, from where it had launched four hours earlier................

The seven-month journey of the ExoMars spacecraft will first take the vehicle through detailed testing operations, powering up and checking out the instruments, before a major Deep Space Maneuver occurs around July 28 to set ExoMars on its final course towards Mars.

On the news this morning, all I hear is Tesla, Tesla, Tesla has a Mars project planned.............welcome to 2016?

I don't recall the press gushing all over that 2016 event.

ARCA Space Corporation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCA_Space_Corporation

Orizont suborbital vehicle