“We cannot really cut corners,” said the head of the European Space Agency. A European-Russian mission to put a rover on Mars and look for signs of life there has been postponed, to 2022. Most parts of the mission including the rocket and the rover, named Rosalind Franklin, are ready. But not enough time remains before the launch opportunity in July to complete tests of the parachutes, fix issues with an electronics module and finish the spacecraft’s software.
“We could launch, but that would mean we are not doing all the tests,” Jan Woerner, the director general of the European Space Agency, said during a news conference on Thursday morning where the decision was announced. “We cannot really cut corners. ” The coronavirus pandemic played a role in the decision. Dimitry Rogozin, head of Russia’s space agency, said that “force majeure circumstances related to exacerbation of the epidemiological situation in Europe” would leave mission staff from both countries unable to travel.
Dr. Woerner and Mr. Rogozin discussed the status of the mission by teleconference before deciding on the delay; because of the pandemic, Dr. Woerner canceled plans to meet in person with Mr.
Rogozin in Moscow. “This is a very tough decision, but it’s, I’m sure, the right one,” Dr. Woerner said. The positions of Mars and Earth line up every 26 months, allowing a relatively quick trip.
Missing that alignment means that the mission will stay on the ground until the next opportunity between August and October 2022. The ExoMars program has persisted through more than a decade of starts and stops and shifts in plans. Originally, it was a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, with NASA providing the rockets and the landing system, similar to what was used to put NASA’s Curiosity rover on Martian ground in 2012.
“But in February 2012, the Obama administration pulled out of the plans, partly to pay for delays and cost overruns with the James Webb Space Telescope.”
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The Europeans then turned to Russia. The first half of the ExoMars program, the Trace Gas Orbiter, launched in March 2016 on a Russian Proton rocket. It entered orbit around Mars seven months later and continues to operate. But the accompanying lander, Schiaparelli, crashed after a sensor error caused the spacecraft to jettison its parachute too early because it thought it was already on the ground instead of still two miles in the air.
The ExoMars rover, which will use a different landing system, was originally scheduled to launch in 2018, but that launch window was missed because of delays in the completion of the spacecraft and the instruments. Some NASA Mars missions have also missed launch windows. Curiosity was to have launched in 2009 but was pushed back two years because of problems with electrical motors. Problems with a key instrument on Mars InSight delayed its launch to 2018 from 2016.
Both eventually landed on Mars successfully. The thin atmosphere of Mars makes landing particularly tricky, requiring careful testing of parachutes and other systems used to reach the surface. There is not enough air to provide much drag on the spacecraft as it speeds to the ground, although what’s there still generates friction that heats the exterior of a spacecraft to thousands of degrees. Two earlier European landers — the Beagle 2 in 2003 and Schiaparelli in 2016 — failed.
A number of Soviet landing attempts in the 1970s also failed. Only NASA has been able to successfully operate robotic spacecraft on the surface of Mars. Last year, the parachutes for the ExoMars mission — one that is 50 feet wide to deploy at supersonic speeds in the Martian atmosphere, and a second, 120-foot-wide one that would billow out at subsonic speeds — failed in tests. With NASA’s help, the problems with the ExoMars parachutes were diagnosed and additional tests are planned for this month.
The spacecraft will be put in storage once it is completed later this year. No changes will be made to the spacecraft or the instruments, Dr. Woerner said. Other missions to Mars scheduled to launch this year appear to be on track: a NASA rover, Perseverance, a Chinese rover and an orbiter from the United Arab Emirates called Hope.
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