The planned 2022 launch of a European space mission with Russia to land a robot on Mars is now “highly unlikely,” the European Space Agency said Monday.
The likely postponement of the mission is due to European Union sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Civil space cooperation between Russia and Western countries has progressed for decades, despite conflict areas on the ground. But Ukraine’s military conflict has hampered both sides’ ability to separate what happens in space from what happens on the planet’s surface.
The ExoMars mission, which includes a robotic rover built by the European Space Agency, bundled with a Russian-supplied landing pad, was expected to launch in the fall of this year from a Russian spaceport in Kazakhstan. In 2023, the two partners would attempt to land a rover, Rosalind Franklin, named after an English scientist who helped discover the structure of DNA.
But in a brief statement lamenting the “human casualties and tragic consequences of the war in Ukraine,” ESA, a group of 22 European states, said “the sanctions and the broader context make a launch in 2022 highly unlikely.”
The ESA statement makes all but sure a delay of at least two years for the ExoMars mission, which was designed to traverse the surface of Mars to search for clues to possible ancient life using cameras, sensors and a drill. Trips to Mars usually start about every two years during a window when the red planet aligns with Earth, allowing for a shorter trip. Funding and technical issues had previously delayed the mission from a 2018 launch. The Covid-19 pandemic and technical issues caused the mission’s most recent delay in 2020.
ExoMars’ predicament is the latest fallout from the Russian invasion of civilian space. Last week, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said it would halt the launch of its workhorse Soyuz rocket at ESA’s launch pad in French Guiana and bring home 87 Russian personnel from the site, spurring collaboration with European partners at the site. organizing space launches would be effectively suspended. This could have consequences for at least four European missions in the coming months.
The war has also called into question the fate of other international space partnerships, such as those aboard the International Space Station, an orbital science lab mainly maintained by NASA and Roscosmos. The alliances that make up the two-decade-old station, a symbol of post-Cold War diplomacy, have survived the geopolitical conflicts on Earth.
Understand the Russian attack on Ukraine
What is the basis of this invasion? Russia considers Ukraine to be within its natural sphere of influence, and it has become nervous about Ukraine’s proximity to the West and the prospect of the country becoming a member of NATO or the European Union. Although Ukraine is part of neither, it receives financial and military aid from the United States and Europe.
The space station relies on electricity from the US portion to power the outpost, as well as motors from connected Russian spacecraft to maintain its orbit. As of 2011, NASA relied on Russian rockets to take its astronauts to orbit when the space shuttles were retired. But that changed in 2020 when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule began taking NASA crews to orbit. The two sides had recently negotiated the launch of Russian astronauts on the SpaceX vehicle.
Although Washington last week enacted stricter export control laws for US-Russia technology trade, NASA said the new rules “will continue to allow US-Russia cooperation in civilian space.” And Kathy Lueders, NASA’s chief of space operations, said at a news conference Monday that she saw no indication that Russia’s commitment to the International Space Station is waning, or that NASA should make plans to maintain the space station’s orbit without Russian aid.
“It would be a sad day for international operations if we can’t continue to operate in space,” she said.
