Europe’s ExoMars rover mission is threatened after ties were cut with Russia, which was providing a landing craft to Mars. Now, the European Space Agency is studying options to keep the €1 billion mission alive.
. The only problem: The rover has neither a ride to the Red Planet nor a landing craft to get it safely to the surface. Russia was supposed to provide both, but ESA suspended ties and canceled a planned launch in September after the country invaded Ukraine last month. “There was no real alternative,” says ExoMars team leader Thierry Blancquaert of ESA’s technology center in the Netherlands.
The change in parentage caused the launch date to slip from 2018 to 2020. But in early 2020, difficulties with the parachutes designed to slow descent into the martian atmosphereThis time around, “All the hardware was ready to start the launch campaign,” Blancquaert says. The Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok are in Turin, Italy, ready to be shipped to Russia’s spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Another technology is retrorockets, used to take over from parachutes in the final stages of descent. ESA tested some simple retrorockets in 2016 with its Schiaparelli lander, which. “In Europe we have not yet matured this technology,” Blancquaert says.
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