ESA breaks its collaboration with Russia in Exomars and delays mission to Mars

The European Space Agency (ESA) broke this Thursday its collaboration with its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, in the Exomars Mars exploration program thereby delaying the launch of that mission until at least 2026.

For its part, the Roscosmos leadership assured that Russia continues with its plans and will send its own expedition to Mars.

The decision of the ESA, “difficult”, as admitted by its director general, Josef Aschbacher, is made before the practical and political impossibility of continuing to work on this with Russiasanctioned by the international community as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.

Exomars was made up of two missions. The first was launched in 2016 and was made up of a satellite for the study of trace gases in the Martian atmosphere (TGO) and the Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing module, which crashed on the planet’s surface by mistake.

This second, with the Rosalind Franklin rover to take and study samples of the Martian soil, was initially postponed from 2018 to 2020 and then to 2022, since the aggravation of the covid pandemic in Europe prevented its experts from carrying out all the necessary preliminary tests.

It was scheduled to land in the Oxia Planum region, located north of the planet’s equator, which has thick, clayey sedimentary deposits that, according to the ESA, could correspond to lagoons or marine deposits.

But the agency’s Council, which met this Wednesday and Thursday in Paris, was categorical in asking Aschbacher to take the necessary steps to suspend cooperation activities and to undertake the industry studies needed to analyze available options.

Given that there are only favorable conditions for the launch every 26 months, if the collaboration were to be resumed in time, the year 2024 would be the closest date, but the ESA saw that hypothesis as unlikely and admitted that 2026, with other partners, appears as the next most feasible possibility.

“But even that date will be a challenge. There will be new decisions and funding needed and all of this is something that has to be discussed”, said the CEO.

The US space agency (NASA) has already shown interest in supporting the mission, but ESA must now assess what can be done at European level and in which areas it might need cooperation.

In the last decade it has invested around 1,000 million euros in this project: “It’s not wasted money. The industry has learned a lot”, Aschbacher specified in a press conference in which it was made clear that when Exomars can be launched, its results will continue to be useful because there is no other similar mission that can be brought forward.

Russian response

Russian Dmitri Rogozin, director of Roscosmos did not back down from the goal of exploring Marsdespite the European decision.

“We have lost several years, but we will make a replica of our descent module, we will equip it with an Angar carrier rocket and from the new Voschoni cosmodrome we will carry out this scientific expedition on our own”, he said on his Telegram channel.

Rogozin accused the Europeans of subservience to the United States, while the head of the Roscosmos press office, Dmitri Strugovets, considered that “it is a pity that ESA colleagues put their anti russian stance above common goals of humanity to study the universe.

The ESA had admitted today that, although it recognizes the impact on the scientific exploration of space, “as an intergovernmental organization with the mandate to develop and implement space programs in full respect of European values” (…) it is “fully” aligned with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its Member States.

Exomars is not the only collateral affected as a result of the conflict. Roscosmos’ decision to withdraw its staff from the European space center in French Guiana has forced it to interrupt all missions that were going to take off with a Russian Soyuz rocket and also look for alternatives.

Instead, scientific cooperation continues on the International Space Station (ISS) and ESA’s goal is to keep its operations safe. The ISS is participated by ESA, Roscosmos, the NASA agency, the Japanese agency JAXA and the Canadian CSA. (I)