The mission called for the September launch of a European Space Agency rover bound for the planet Mars, using a Russian launch vehicle and lander.
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New setback for ExoMars. The European Space Agency (ESA) has suspended the Russian-European mission following the cessation of cooperation with the Russian space agency Roscosmos due to the war in Ukraine, it announced Thursday March 17 in a press release following its Board meeting.
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The ExoMars mission planned the September launch of an ESA rover bound for the planet Mars, using a Russian launcher and lander. The Council of the European Space Agency has instructed its director to launch a rapid industrial study to relaunch ExoMars and seek alternatives for the other missions.
Initially scheduled for 2020, the launch of ExoMars had been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, to September 2022. It is now more than compromised due to a window of fire towards the red planet which does not s only opens…every two years, due to the alignment of the planets.
According to a millimeter choreography, the ESA rover, Rosalind Franklin, was to be transported by a Proton rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, and to land on Martian soil using the “Kazatchok” lander, also Russian.
All other ESA missions based on the use of the Russian Soyuz launcher are also suspended. These include two satellites for the European location constellation Galileo, the Euclid science mission and the European-Japanese Earth observation mission EarthCARE.