Artykuły o ExoMars 2022

[Orionid]

ExoMars rover mission delayed to late 2022
by Andrew Jones — March 12, 2020 [SN]


The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission has been delayed to 2022 due to parachute, electronics issues.

HELSINKI — The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission will not launch in 2020 due to a lack of time to test and qualify problematic parachutes and electronics vital to the spacecraft.

European Space Agency director-general Jan Woerner made the announcement in a press conference Thursday after a meeting with Dmitry Rogozin, head of mission partner Roscosmos.

Woerner stated that the mission’s Proton launch vehicle, the landing platform and the rover itself were assessed to be ready for launch.

However two parachutes required for Mars entry, descent and landing still require testing and qualification. Additionally some spacecraft electronics need to be returned to suppliers.

“Launching this year would mean sacrificing essential remaining tests,” Woerner said. “This is a very tough decision, but I am sure the right one”.

The decision comes after the ESA-Roscosmos project team evaluated all the activities needed for an authorize launch.

Woerner stated that although the rover is close to launch readiness, the delay necessarily pushed the launch back more than two years due to celestial mechanics.

Optimal windows for launching to Mars open for a few weeks every 26 months, due to the planets’ respective orbits.

The Rosalind Franklin rover is a second ExoMars mission to search for signs of life at depths up to two meters below the martian surface. It consists of a Russian-led surface platform and the European-led rover, to be launched on a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur.

“We want to make ourselves 100% sure of a successful mission. We cannot allow ourselves any margin of error. More verification activities will ensure a safe trip and the best scientific results on Mars,” Woerner said in an ESA press release alongside the press conference.

Responding to a journalist question, Woerner acknowledged that the coronavirus outbreak would have had an impact on the mission because international teams cannot travel as easily as before. Woerner said he did not know if the pandemic would have prevented a launch in July.

Woerner stated that ESA remains on schedule and on budget for the Mars Sample Return mission with NASA. There is no indication ExoMars will impact the sample return project, Woerner tweeted.

Parachute problems prompt second delay

The ExoMars rover mission was initially scheduled to launch in 2018, but was delayed to 2020 due to delays in European and Russian industrial activities.

When the Rosalind Franklin rover  arrives at Mars it will join the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which has been in orbit around the Red Planet since October 2016. TGO will act as a relay station for the mission while continuing its own science mission.

The tests of the 15-meter-diameter supersonic and 35-meter-wide subsonic parachutes—an essential part of the entry, descent and landing phase of the mission—failed in May and August 2019.

Damage to the chutes at the point of extraction from their bags was identified as the cause of the failures, inspectors from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory found. New tests were scheduled for December and February, but have been pushed back to late March.

The new high altitude drop tests will be carried out in Oregon in the United States. The Esrange Space Center, northern Sweden, hosted the earlier tests.

The unprecedented size and complexity of the parachute system is related to the lander provided by Roscosmos. A more powerful retropropulsive system on the lander would have allowed the mission to require only one main chute, according to Spoto. NASA pulled out of the mission in 2012 due to budget cuts, having committed to the mission with ESA in 2009.

Source: https://spacenews.com/exomars-rover-mission-delayed-to-late-2022/

[Orionid]

Launch of ExoMars rover delayed to 2022
March 12, 2020 Stephen Clark [SFN]


The Rosalind Franklin rover for the ExoMars mission completed a series of environmental tests at an Airbus Defense and Space facility in Toulouse, France, in late 2019. Credit: Airbus

Most parts of the joint European-Russian ExoMars lander and rover are nearly ready for launch, but trouble with parachutes, electronics, software and concerns about the growing coronavirus pandemic have delayed the mission’s departure to Mars from this year until 2022, officials announced Thursday.

The leaders of the European Space Agency and Roscosmos — Russia’s space agency — said Thursday that the ExoMars mission would not launch as scheduled this July.

“We have made a difficult but well-weighed decision to postpone the launch to 2022,” said Dmitry Rogozin, director general of Roscosmos. “It is driven primarily by the need to maximize the robustness of all ExoMars systems as well as force majeure circumstances related to exacerbation of the epidemiological situation in Europe, which left our experts practically no possibility to proceed with travels to partner industries.

“I am confident that the steps that we and our European colleagues are taking to ensure mission success will be justified and will unquestionably bring solely positive results for the mission implementation,” Rogozin said in a statement Thursday.

The mission was supposed to blast off from Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Proton rocket during a planetary launch window in July or August. But officials said Thursday several challenges will keep the mission from launching this year.

Instead, the ExoMars mission will take off during the next Mars launch window between August and October 2022, officials said. The lander will target touchdown in a region named Oxia Planum in the northern hemisphere of Mars between April and July 2023.

The primary difficulty facing the ExoMars team involves ensuring the mission’s European-made parachutes are ready to slow the lander during descent through the Martian atmosphere.

Four parachutes — two pilot chutes and supersonic and subsonic main chutes — will slow the ExoMars lander after it enters the Martian atmosphere. The lander will jettison the parachutes and ignite braking rockets to slowly settle onto the surface of Mars.

Engineers encountered parachute failures during two high-altitude drop tests over northern Sweden last year.

With help from experts at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, engineers traced the problem to the parachute bags, and not with the parachutes themselves, according to ESA. Engineers modified the way the parachutes are released from the bags to ease their extraction and avoid frictional damage, ESA said.

Teams have completed a series of ground-based extraction tests at JPL, and the main parachutes are ready for two final high-altitude drop tests in Oregon in the coming weeks, ESA said.

But mission managers wanted to take more time to ensure the ExoMars lander and rover safely get to the surface of Mars.

“We want to make ourselves 100 percent sure of a successful mission,” said Jan Wörner, ESA’s director general. “We cannot allow ourselves any margin of error. More verification activities will ensure a safe trip and the best scientific results on Mars.”


Artist’s concept of the European-built Rosalind Franklin rover (foreground) and Russian-built Kazachok landing platform (background). Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

The European-built Rosalind Franklin rover, named for the famed British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work contributed to DNA research, recently passed final pre-launch thermal and vacuum tests at an Airbus facility in Toulouse, France. Rosalind Franklin is the first European Mars rover, and it is fully outfitted with a payload of nine scientific instruments, including a drill to dig up to 2 meters (6.6 feet) into the Martian soil collect core samples for analysis in the mobile robot’s on-board laboratory.

The Russian-built module designed to carry the European rover to the surface of Mars is also complete. The Russian Kazachok stationary lander, from which Rosalind Franklin will deploy after touchdown, is fully equipped with its 13 scientific experiments.

The descent module has been undergoing propulsion system qualification in the past month. The Kazachok platform has also been undergoing environmental testing in Cannes, France, to verify the spacecraft’s ability to withstand the harsh conditions of space, according to ESA.

“I want to thank the teams in industry that have been working around the clock for nearly a year to complete assembly and environmental testing of the whole spacecraft,” Wörner said in a statement. “We are very much satisfied of the work that has gone into making a unique project a reality and we have a solid body of knowledge to complete the remaining work as quickly as possible.”

The Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok lander were previously supposed to launch in 2018, but officials rescheduled the mission for 2020 after both vehicles ran into development delays. Their launch, now delayed to 2022, is the second of two separate missions developed under the ExoMars program.

The European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli lander launched in March 2016 aboard a Russian Proton rocket. The orbiter successfully entered orbit around Mars later that year, and it continues taking pictures and gathering data on methane and other gases in the Martian atmosphere that could indicate the presence of ongoing biological or geologic activity.

The Schiaparelli probe crashed during its attempt to land on Mars.

The ExoMars program was approved by ESA member states in 2005. At that time, the European Mars rover was scheduled to launch in 2011. But that schedule soon eroded, and ESA and NASA signed agreed in 2009 to partner on the ExoMars missions.

NASA backed out of the partnership in 2012, and ESA signed an agreement in 2013 to proceed with the ExoMars program without major participation from the United States. NASA continued developing electronics and a mass spectrometer for the rover’s largest science instrument, which will search for organic compounds and biomarker in the Martian soil.

Despite the delay in the second ExoMars launch until 2022, three other Mars missions remain scheduled for launch during this year’s planetary launch window in July and August.

NASA’s Perseverance rover, formerly known as Mars 2020, will take off in July from Cape Canaveral. A Chinese Mars rover is also being prepared for launch later this year, and the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Mars orbiter is slated to launch on a Japanese H-2A rocket this summer.

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/03/12/launch-of-exomars-rover-delayed-to-2022/

[Orionid]

ExoMars on schedule for September launch
by Jeff Foust — January 21, 2022 [SN]


ExoMars, scheduled for launch in September, will deliver the Rosalind Franklin rover to the surface of the red planet. Credit: ESA

WASHINGTON — After missing its initial launch window in 2020 in part because of the pandemic, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission is on schedule for a launch in September.

ESA said Jan. 18 preparations for the mission, which will land a rover named Rosalind Franklin on the surface of Mars, are on track for a launch between Sept. 20 and Oct. 1 on a Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The rover and the Kazachok surface platform, provided by Roscosmos, will land in the Oxia Planum region of Mars in June 2023.

Source: https://spacenews.com/exomars-on-schedule-for-september-launch/

[Orionid]

ESA says it’s “very unlikely” ExoMars will launch this year
by Jeff Foust — February 28, 2022 [SN]


ESA announced Feb. 28 that it was "very unlikely" its ExoMars rover mission will launch in September 2022 on a Russian Proton rocket. Credit: ESA

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency said Feb. 28 that it is “very unlikely” that its ExoMars mission will launch this September because of sanctions on Russia from its invasion of Ukraine.

Source: https://spacenews.com/esa-says-its-very-unlikely-exomars-will-launch-this-year/

ESA suspends work with Russia on ExoMars mission
by Jeff Foust — March 17, 2022 Updated 2:45 p.m. Eastern with comments with ESA press conference.  [SN]


ESA will conduct a “fast-track industrial study” to look at options for launching the ExoMars rover after suspending plans to launch it on a Russian Proton rocket. Credit: ESA

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — The European Space Agency has formally halted plans to launch its ExoMars mission on a Russian rocket in September in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The ESA Council, at the conclusion of its latest meeting March 17, unanimously voted to suspend cooperation with Russia on the ExoMars mission, citing “the present impossibility of carrying out the ongoing cooperation with Roscosmos,” according to an ESA statement.

Source: https://spacenews.com/esa-suspends-work-with-russia-on-exomars-mission/

ESA continues talks with NASA on ExoMars cooperation
by Jeff Foust — April 7, 2022 [SN]


ESA Director General said ESA is continuing discussions with NASA about how NASA could help replace Russian elements of the ExoMars mission, while also considering European alternatives. Credit: Tom Kimmell Photography

COLORADO SPRINGS — The European Space Agency is continuing discussions with NASA on how the agencies can work together to revive ESA’s ExoMars mission after ending cooperation with Russia.

ESA announced March 17 it halted plans to launch the mission, featuring a European-built rover, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia was to launch the mission on a Proton rocket and provide a landing platform and other components.
https://spacenews.com/esa-continues-talks-with-nasa-on-exomars-cooperation/

ExoMars official says launch unlikely before 2028
by Jeff Foust — May 3, 2022 [SN]


An ESA official said it's unlikely the agency would be ready to launch the ExoMars rover until at least 2028, and that date could require assistance from NASA on key technologies. Credit: ESA

WASHINGTON — A key official for Europe’s ExoMars mission believes that the rover’s launch will be pushed back until at least 2028 to accommodate changes after ending cooperation with Russia.

ExoMars was to launch in September on a Proton rocket through a partnership between Roscosmos and the European Space Agency. Roscosmos also provided the landing platform for the ESA-built Rosalind Franklin rover.
https://spacenews.com/exomars-official-says-launch-unlikely-before-2028/

Russia threatens ISS European robotic arm after ExoMars termination
by Jeff Foust — July 13, 2022 [SN]


ESA said it has formally terminated cooperation with Russia on ExoMars, which had been suspended since March, and will work with “new partners” on the mission. Credit: ESA

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency has officially ended cooperation with Russia on the ExoMars mission, prompting a Russian threat to halt use of a European robotic arm on the International Space Station.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher announced July 12 that the ESA Council formally decided to terminate cooperation on ExoMars, where Russia would have launched a European rover called Rosalind Franklin to the surface of Mars. That cooperation has been on hold since March.
https://spacenews.com/russia-threatens-iss-european-robotic-arm-after-exomars-termination/