As an astronomy and space exploration show, we know there are going to be days when we have to cover bad news. Rockets explode. Funding gets cut. Beloved spacecraft die. I honestly had never expected that new and evolving wars would disrupt the decades-long collaborations that bind the global space community together.

In an announcement this morning, March 17, director-general Josef Aschbacher from the European Space Agency (ESA) made it clear that ExoMars isn’t going to proceed as planned. He said it was “practically impossible and politically impossible” to continue work with Roscosmos on ExoMars. NASA wants to help, but even then, the quickest the mission can launch is 2024. This date is also when it could happen if cooperation with Roscosmos is possible again. The director also stated that a 2026 launch would be “​​very challenging, realistically” if major changes were needed to put the rover on a NASA-constructed landing platform.

ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration, David Parker, said: Mars is 4.5 billion years old; we just need to wait a few more years.”

ExoMars has a lot of Russian components besides the launch vehicle. They built the lander which would have delivered the rover softly to the Martian surface, a critical part of the whole mission. In addition to the lander, several experiments on the rover itself are Russian, and the critical radioisotope heaters that will keep the rover warm during the Martian night are also made in Russia.

Roscosmos, for their part, stated that they would use the Proton-M rocket which was going to launch ExoMars 2022 to launch a satellite for the Russian government. They also said they would do their own Mars mission using the new Angara rocket from Vostochny and a newly built landing platform similar to the one they built for ExoMars.

More Information

ESA suspends work with Russia on ExoMars mission (Space News)

“Roskosmos” will cope with the organization of the mission to Mars, said Rogozin (RIA Novosti)