Mars Mission Delayed

The European and Russian space agencies have delayed their next mission to Mars from 2018 to 2020.

16:27 03 May 2016

As expected, Europe and Russia have delayed ExoMars rover project to 2020, a decision that industry chiefs have predicted saying that all the needed hardware could not be produced in time.

 

The aim of the mission is to search for signs of past or present life by landing a rover on the Red Planet that could drill up to 2m below the surface. It is the second part of the programme with the first part involving the study of atmosphere of the planet using a satellite that was successfully launched in March and should arrive in October.

 

Explaining the cause of the delay, Rolf de Groot, the head of Esa's Robotic Exploration Coordination Office, said: "It is not only the components of the spacecraft; it's several of the instruments.

 

"What we have been doing lately is seeing if we could shorten the assembly, integration and testing (AIT) phase to something that would be acceptable from a risk point of view, but still make the 2018 launch.

 

"Very recently, we have concluded that this is not possible without adding a large amount of additional risk to an already risky mission. So, we decided the only responsible thing to do was move to the 2020 launch date."