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Launch of ExoMars delayed to the next launch window in 2022



The launch was postponed to August-October 2022 for a number of reasons. New dates for the arrival of the Russian landing platform and the European rover to Mars: April-July 2023.

Project history


In 1999, a group of scientists turned to the European Space Agency (ESA) with a proposal to send to Mars a mobile laboratory designed to search for life. The proposal was approved and included in the Aurora program formed in 2001 , which was created to form a long-term European program for space research of the Solar System, aimed both at robotic research and, in the future, at manned exploration of the Moon and Mars.

In 2002, the project received its current designation “ExoMars”, and soon after that the initial plan was drawn up: a landing platform and a 120 kg rover with 10 kg of scientific instruments were to be launched on the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle from the Kuru cosmodrome in French Guiana in 2009. It was assumed that their service life on Mars will be at least 6 months. The prototype of the rover in June 2007.



Like most space projects, he had to go through a series of delays and transfers: in 2005, the launch was delayed from 2009 to 2011. In the region of 2006, the apparatus became heavier and was transferred to the Arian-5 launch vehicle, and the launch was postponed to November 2013. In October 2008, another transfer took place - in January-February 2016. Soon, the ESA agreed with NASA to jointly participate in this project, and the launch "moved" to the Atlas-5 launch vehicle. In this regard, in July 2009, another transfer was also announced - to April 2018. But at the same time, good news appeared: in anticipation of the arrival of the European Mars rover on Mars, a European orbital vehicle was to go there in 2016, which, in addition to fulfilling its scientific goals,was supposed to act as a repeater for high-speed communication of the rover with the Earth.

The prototype of the rover in April 2009.

In December 2009, the agreement was finally certified by the European side, but by 2011 it had broken up at the initiative of NASA, as they could not convince the US Congress to allocate funds for this project. In 2012, Roscosmos agreed to replace NASA in cooperation with the ExoMars program, and the launches of both vehicles finally moved to the Proton-M launch vehicle. At the same time, the launch of the rover was postponed until 2020, and the launch of the “Trace Gas Orbiter” (TGO) orbiter took place without additional delays - March 14, 2016.

Current situation




On February 12, the Rosalind Franklin rover successfully completed thermal vacuum tests at the Airbus test base and was sent to the Thales Alenia Space base in Cannes (France) for final assembly with a Russian lander and a European flight module. Last month, the landing platform and the rover were fully assembled and passed assembly tests. However, there were some new problems : they were found in the on-board computer, software and parachute of the landing platform, as well as in the solar panels of the rover itself. It is noteworthy that the European side was responsible for the production of all of the above . However, all costs associated with delayed launch, the ESA decided to take on.

Technical problems and delays have already led to the fact that the cost of the ExoMars program, taking into account the launch of TGO in 2016, exceeded € 1 billion at the end of last year. At the same time, the main problems of the 2nd mission of the program are associated with parachutes, which, after the failure of the tests in May and August 2019 (both parachutes with diameters of 15 and 30 m broke during the deployment), forced the ESA to seek help from NASA, and more specifically, to Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL). This is how the project manager Pietro Balloni spoke about the situation with parachutes in December last year:
« JPL . , . , , , . , . , 50 50 26 12 .»


Perhaps it is not surprising that testing parachutes for the Martian landing mission causes such difficulties. The main problems are caused by the reconstruction of conditions that even at the very surface of Mars correspond to conditions in the Earth’s atmosphere only at an altitude of about 35 km. Another problem is the need for this to create gigantic parachute systems. So only the ExoMars exhaust parachute has a diameter of 5 meters, the brake parachute is already 15 meters, the main one is all 30 meters. The first parachute is launched at a speed of 1.7 thousand km / h! The braking parachute should fire at even more modest numbers - at a speed of "just" 400 km / h.



Unfortunately, when testing parachutes, a miracle did not happen, and the transferThe dates of the two final tests had to be postponed from the beginning to the end of March, which forced ESA and Roscosmos to organize an unscheduled meeting about the possibility of postponing the launch date. However, due to the precautions associated with the outbreak of the coronavirus COVID-19 , the meeting was held in broadcast mode. So the heads of both agencies spoke out on its outcome:
ESA : « , 100% . . . , , . , . , ».
The head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin : “We made a difficult and, at the same time, balanced decision to postpone the launch of the mission to 2022. It is caused primarily by the requirement for maximum reliability of all ExoMars spacecraft systems, as well as force majeure circumstances caused by the worsening epidemiological situation in Europe, which practically stopped the possibility of working trips of our specialists to partner enterprises. I am sure that the measures that we and our European colleagues are taking to successfully implement the project will be justified and will bring exceptionally positive results in the implementation of the mission. ”
Although the head of Roscosmos associates the main reason for the transfer with the difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic, not everyone agrees with his position :
: « “” , ExoMars-2020. , … , 2022 ».
One cannot disagree with his words, since from the end of March until the start window was opened there was “nothing at all” - 4 months, in which it would be time to have time to install a parachute in the general assembly of 3 devices, check them, and then collect useful load with a booster rocket and carry out already final tests before launch.



Moreover, just yesterday it became knownthat in a pair of Proton-M launch vehicles, one of which was to be used to launch the ExoMars, low-quality bolts were found that were overheated during production and had low strength. According to estimates, their replacement should take about 45 days, which theoretically still allows you to keep within the launch window. But such a rush would be associated with additional risk and, at least in my opinion, would not be justified at all.

This story again reminds us that the expression “Space Is Hard” even 60 years after the start of the space age is not just words, and the statistics of landing on Mars remains exactly “50 by 50” after the successful landing of InSight. And sometimes a delayed launch is the only right decision that can save a mission from failure.

The composition and tasks of the apparatus


In total, 11 Russian and 2 European scientific instruments with a total weight of 45 kg are located on the Cossack landing platform, 7 European and 2 Russian devices weighing 26 kg on the Rozalind Franklin rover. The main tasks of the “Cossack” include the study of the composition of the atmosphere of Mars during the descent, as well as the determination of the radiation situation and long-term studies of the climate of Mars at the landing site. Rosalind Franklin will have to study the distribution of water in the subsurface soil layer, as well as the search for traces of life in it in the past and even, possibly, in the present.

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