Coronavirus restrictions the final straw for ESA’s Mars Mission

Enlarge / The Rosalind Franklin rover following environmental tests. (credit: ESA)

On Thursday, the European Space Agency and its Russian partners announced that they would be delaying their planned rover/lander mission to Mars. As we reported earlier this year, the project was facing a number of technical hurdles, and time was running short to sort them out before a convenient launch window for Mars closed. Now, travel restrictions put in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus have ensured that they won't be handled in time.

Life on Mars?

The project, termed ExoMars, is an ambitious one, intended to help determine if life might ever have existed on the red planet. It will include a Russian-built surface platform that includes weather instruments and the ability to monitor the exchange of volatile chemicals between the Martian atmosphere and its surface. But the star of the show would be the ESA's first rover on Mars, the Rosalind Franklin (named after a scientist who helped determine the structure of DNA).

The rover's key feature is the ability to drill down two meters below the Martian surface, a depth at which liquid water is more likely to be found and which would be somewhat shielded from the harsh radiation that bathes the Martian surface.

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