The Rosalind Franklin rover won’t launch to Mars for another two years ESA/ATG medialab
The European Space Agency and Russian space agency Roscosmos have postponed a planned robotic mission to Mars. The second ExoMars mission was due to launch in July or August this year, but won’t go ahead until 2022, in part due to the current coronavirus outbreak, the agencies have said.
The mission, which includes a Russian lander called Kazachok and an ESA rover called Rosalind Franklin, aims to search for previous signs of life on the Red Planet. It was scheduled to land in March 2021, but this has now been pushed back to 2023, following a planned launch between August and October 2022.
ExoMars’s second mission had already been plagued with problems, including failed landing tests that resulted in damage to the parachutes designed to land the rover safely on Mars. 鈥淲e are doing all the tests in order to find out if there are any [other] issues,鈥 says ESA director general Jan W枚rner.
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These issues are the key reasons why the mission has been delayed, but in a press release today, the ESA said that the 鈥済eneral aggravation鈥 of the current coronavirus pandemic has also played a part.
W枚rner says the agency isn鈥檛 鈥渉iding behind鈥 the coronavirus to excuse other problems, but it does have some impact on the mission as it limits travel for the mission team, he said.
The first ExoMars mission reached Mars in October 2016 and, like the second, it had two components. The Trace Gas Orbiter is attempting to see if key gases that may be linked to biological processes are present in the Martian atmosphere. The second part, the Schiaparelli lander, crashed onto the surface of the planet.
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