MOSCOW, April 18, by Nikolay Guryanov. The political decision destroyed the long-term work of Russian and European scientists on the creation of vehicles for the exploration of Mars. What has world science lost and is it possible to resume the project?“If everything went well, now a joint Russian-European program would work on Mars. A rover and a platform. I often dream about this couple that transmits data. What happened is a great tragedy,” admitted the academician, scientific director of the Institute of Space RAS Research Lev Zeleny at a press conference at the International Information Agency «Russia Today». It was assumed that it would become the flagship in the European space program «Aurora». However, the European Space Agency (ESA) had neither experience in interplanetary flights nor sufficient funding, so NASA was involved.
For several years, together with the Americans, they developed the project, and it acquired its main outlines. It was decided that the mission would take place in two stages: in 2016, an orbital module and an experimental lander would fly to the Red Planet, and two years later, a rover with a landing platform.
They were going to put a unique device on the rover — a drill capable of penetrating the Martian soil to a depth of up to two meters. Scientists hoped that life (or at least traces of it) could survive below the surface — in a zone protected from radiation. The rock samples were to be carried up a special tube into the rover, a mobile laboratory with many measuring instruments. Data from the rover would be transmitted to the landing platform, and from it to the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) orbital station, which, in turn, would broadcast information to Earth.
But in 2013, the Americans sharply reduced funding for several programs and left the ExoMars. “It was a moment of panic for us,” recalls ESA specialist Jorge Vago in the National Geographic documentary ExoMars. Impossible mission».
Russia to the rescue
Some ESA member countries proposed to complete the project, but Jean-Jacques Dordain, who served as the agency's general director, pushed through the decision to restart the mission in cooperation with Roscosmos.
In an extremely short time, Russian specialists had to prepare instruments and landing module for the European rover. The scientific part was entrusted to the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the technical part was assigned to the NPO named after Lavochkin (part of Roscosmos). Academician Zeleny assumed leadership of the project from the Russian side.
In 2016, TGO and the Schiaparelli experimental lander were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton launch vehicle. «When the rocket took off, I felt the same joy that I felt at the birth of my children,» says Jorge Vago. -type=»photo» data-crop-ratio=»0.742″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»445″ data-source-sid=»not_rian_photo» class=»lazyload» width=» 1920″ height=»1425″ decoding=»async» />
Seven months later, the probe safely entered the orbit of the Red Planet. However, due to a failure of the braking systems, a 600-kilogram lander crashed on the surface. True, he managed to transmit data to Earth that made it possible to understand the cause of the accident.
Additional time was required to process information and correct errors, so the second stage of the mission, scheduled for 2018, was postponed.
< h3 id="1865895269-3">Covid and bugs
The window for flights to Mars opens every 26 months, when the planet is closest to the Earth. If the start is disrupted, you have to wait another two years. However, in March 2020, a pandemic began, and the ESA decided to postpone the mission again, this time due to sanitary restrictions.
At the same time, COVID-19 did not prevent the United States and China from sending their own rovers to Mars that same year. However, scientists working on the Russian-European project recognized the need for a delay — some critical systems needed to be finalized.
By that time, the rover had managed to get the name «Rosalind Franklin» — in honor of the British biologist who contributed to the study of DNA. «She helped us understand life on Earth, and now her namesake will do the same on Mars,» UK Secretary of State for Science and Innovation Chris Skidmore explained the decision.
For the next two years, all the shortcomings were eliminated, and in January 2022, the ESA announced that the rover and landing module were ready for shipment. In Italy, Rosalind Franklin was installed on the Cossack and covered with a protective dome. Then the design was going to be delivered to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from where the Proton-M launch vehicle was supposed to launch the mission into space in September 2022.
However, after the start of a special military operation, ESA announced the suspension of the project, and then the complete severance of cooperation with Russia on the ExoMars mission. >This meant abandoning the use of the Russian landing module and all scientific devices. The rover has been removed from the landing platform and the Cossack will now be returned to Russia.
«We will pull out the European devices that were on the landing platform. They (the Europeans. — Approx. ed.), which is even more difficult, will remove the Russian devices installed on the rover. And they will destroy, in general, both of them,» stressed Green. According to him, the parties have already signed a corresponding agreement.
The academician noted that the Russian side in the fall of 2022 tried to exchange instruments without removing them from spacecraft so that they could be used further. But «reason did not prevail here.»
The decision actually buried the 20-year work of hundreds of scientists from 20 countries. Both Russian and European experts speak of the cancellation of the mission as a personal tragedy.
«ExoMars» took a good third, if not half, of my scientific career , explains geologist and exobiologist Francis Westall in the film ExoMars. Impossible mission.» — It was my child, and I lost him.»
She studied the oldest fossils in geological deposits — traces of the first microorganisms on Earth — and hoped to find something similar under the surface of a neighboring planet.
Russian scientists have done a lot of work on the manufacture of instruments for the study of Mars. So, on the Rosalind Franklin mast, they were going to install an infrared spectrometer ISEM to analyze the atmosphere near the surface and the mineralogical composition of the upper soil layer, as well as an ADRON-RM neutron spectrometer to search for hydrogen. More than a dozen Russian sensors were planned to be used on the Kazachok lander. According to Zeleny, now all this equipment can only be used at exhibitions.
«This will break my heart»
ESA decided to launch ExoMars without Russia's participation. To bring the mission back to life, the Europeans will need hundreds of millions of euros in additional funding and several years of work. The tentative date for the next launch is October 2028.
«The landing module was mainly Russian-made. The new one will be built entirely in Europe with some participation from NASA — the help of the Americans may be needed for the propulsion system,» says Pietro Baglioni, head of the Rosalind Franklin mission.
That adds optimism to European scientists that, thanks to unique technologies, the mission will remain relevant in five and ten years. None of the competitors is able to create something like this before 2028.
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However, the ExoMars pioneers will probably have retired by then. «It will break my heart,» says Frenchwoman Valerie Charleti, who has been involved in the development of the mission from the very beginning. «But there are young people who are quite competent, they have more strength and energy than I do.»
Meanwhile, Russian instruments installed on the TGO orbiter continue to operate successfully. The signals are received by the Center for Deep Space Communications, located near the city of Kalyazin. In 2021, the high-resolution epithermal neutron detector FREND, created at the IKI RAS, helped make a sensational discovery: deposits of water ice were discovered in the giant Martian canyon system — the Mariner Valley, which opens up broad prospects for the development of the Red Planet.
The future of our own Russian mission to the Red Planet is still vague. According to Zeleny, after the failure with ExoMars, scientists are «in a disassembled state.»