By Tanya Weaver, Fri 17 May 2024
Collected at : https://eandt.theiet.org/2024/05/17/esa-and-nasa-team-land-exomars-rover-mars
The European Space Agency (ESA) and Nasa have announced a partnership for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission to enable the Rosalind Franklin rover to get to Mars by 2030.
The Rosalind Franklin rover is on a mission to find out whether life exists or has ever existed on the red planet. However, its development and original launch date has been hampered by delays.
The rover is part of the ExoMars programme, which comprises two missions: the first – the Trace Gas Orbiter – launched in 2016 while the second, carrying the Rosalind Franklin rover, will launch in 2028.
The ExoMars mission was initially pushed back from 2020, because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the need for more tests on the spacecraft.
Then in 2022, it was announced it would not go ahead that year as planned because of the conflict in Ukraine. The project is a collaboration between the ESA and Russia’s Roscosmos.
At the time, the ESA said that it was “fully aligned” with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its member states despite the impact on the scientific exploration of space.
The ESA, its member states and European industry then went about reshaping the mission with new partnerships.
One of these is Nasa. In a recent announcement, the ESA confirmed that it has signed a new memorandum of understanding with Nasa to formalise the provision of key elements for the Rosalind Franklin rover mission, including the launch service, braking engines and lightweight radioisotope heater units (RHUs) for the rover.
Led by the UK, work on the development and certification of a European RHU to fly on the mission will continue in parallel.
The ESA GSTP/ENDURE (European Devices Using Radioisotope Energy) programme will deliver an end-to-end European capability for radioisotope heat and power systems by the end of this decade.
“This pivotal agreement strengthens our collaborative efforts for the ExoMars programme and ensures that the Rosalind Franklin rover will set its wheels on Martian soil in 2030,” said Daniel Neuenschwander, the ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration.
“Together, we are opening new frontiers in our quest to uncover the mysteries of Mars. We demonstrate our commitment to pioneering space exploration and expanding human knowledge,” he added.
A major goal of the Rosalind Franklin mission is to understand the geological context and identify minerals formed in the presence of water. It will be the first Mars rover to contain a drill long enough to explore molecules up to two metres below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from harsh surface radiation and extreme temperatures.
The ESA is releasing a number of videos about the mission. The first one, above, Scouting the Red Planet, starts after a successful descent and landing on the red planet in 2030. It highlights the rover’s unique wheel-walking locomotion mode to overcome difficult terrains, as well as autonomous navigation software.
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