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(Image: ESA)

The joint European and Russian ExoMars programme craft has blasted off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan on Monday morning.

The craft travel through space for seven months before reaching the Red Planet.

The satellite – called the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter – will investigate if there is microbial life responsible for methane on Mars.

(Image: ESA) (Image: ESA)

A small landing module called a Schiaparelli will be ejected from the orb on October 16 – three days before arriving on Mars

It will then carry out its investigations from October 19.

Håkan Svedhem, an ExoMars 2016 project scientist, said the mission will give scientists a better idea of what is going on closer to the Martian surface.

On Earth, methane is sourced from bacteria and can be released by volcanic activity and geological chemistry.

The orb will test whether gas is the product of biology or geology on Mars.

Planetary scientist Dr Peter Grindrod, from Birkbeck, University of London, who is funded by the UK Space Agency, said: "It's incredibly exciting.

"This is a series of missions that's trying to address one of the fundamental questions in science: is there life anywhere else besides the Earth?

(Image: ESA)

"Finding that life exists elsewhere in the solar system would be a huge discovery, so the evidence has to be strong.

"As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Last year scientists were overwhelmed to discover sources of water on the Red Planet.