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PARIS – Due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe will not try to send its first rover to Mars this year; this would investigate whether the planet was home to life at all.
The launch of the ExoMars rover to the red planet is likely in 2026 or 2028 if cooperation on the mission with Russia’s state space company Roscosmos cannot continue, the European Space Agency said on Thursday.
The agency’s director, Dr. Josef Aschbacher said previous plans to launch an investigation with Russia this September were now “practically impossible, but also politically impossible.”
“This year, the launch is gone.”
ESA had previously said the mission was “very unlikely” due to Russia’s war against Ukraine. The decision to suspend cooperation with Roscosmos was taken by ESA’s governing council at a meeting in Paris this week.
“We deeply condemn the human losses and tragic consequences of aggression against Ukraine,” the ESA said in a statement. While recognizing its impact on the scientific exploration of space, ESA is fully compliant with the sanctions imposed on Russia by member states.”
Because of their orbits around the sun, Mars is easily reached from Earth only once every two years. The earliest next launch window will be 2024. But if the sanctions against Russia were not lifted by then and cooperation with Roscosmos was allowed to resume, then this window could have been missed as well.
It will take time to remove Russia’s traces on the rover and replace Russian components with parts from elsewhere. The rover, named Rosalind Franklin and equipped with a drill, is European but has some Russian components.
The landing platform Kazachok is Russian but also has some European instruments.
The rover is intended to be the first to look for signs of life at depths of up to 6 feet below the Martian surface, where they can be well preserved, if any.
The ExoMars mission has already been delayed from 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and the need for more testing on the spacecraft.
The mission was to launch with a Russian Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan in September and was scheduled to land on the red planet in about nine months.
Already on Mars is NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed in February 2021, and China’s first Mars rover, Zhurong, named after the Chinese god of fire.
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