The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Thursday the suspension of cooperation with Russia, forcing it to quickly seek alternatives for the launch of its next missions, especially to Mars.
The ExoMars mission was planned for this year, but in the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, ESA, in a statement, “recognized the impossibility of maintaining the current cooperation with (the Russian Space Agency) Roscosmos”.
ExoMars, whose goal was to land an autonomous exploration vehicle (rover) on Mars, could be delayed until 2026.
The ESA Executive Board instructed its director to carry out a rapid survey in order to relaunch ExoMars and look for alternatives for four other missions.
“This is a very bitter fact for all space enthusiasts,” said Roscosmos director Dmitri Rogozin.
Russia will be able to send its own exploration ship to Mars in a few years, he said.
“Yes, it will take a few years (...) but we will be able to carry out this fact-finding mission alone from the new launch site of the Vostochny cosmodrome,” he said.
- A mission full of incidents -
ExoMars planned to launch the rover to Mars in September using a Russian shuttle and a landing structure.
Until now, ESA mission launches have depended on the use of the Russian Soyuz shuttle from the European space port of Kuru in French Guiana.
Roscosmos suspended Soyuz launches from Kuru in response to European sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. His team, composed of about a hundred engineers and technicians, has also ceased.
Originally scheduled for 2020, the launch of ExoMars had already been postponed until September 2022 due to the pandemic.
ESA's rover, Rosalind Franklin, was to be launched from Baikonur (Kazakhstan) and reached Mars thanks to the landing platform “Kazachok”, also Russian.
The Mars shooting window opens every two years. The mission is impossible “at least until 2026,” explained ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.
Cooperation with American NASA “is an option,” he said.
Other ESA missions that depend on the use of the Soyuz space shuttle have also been suspended. These are two satellites destined for the European location constellation Galileo, the Euclid scientific mission and the European-Japanese Earth observation mission EarthCare.
The situation is difficult because one of the alternatives to replace Soyuz, the Ariane 6 rocket, has a complete schedule.
This rocket has not yet launched a French military observation satellite, CSO-3, into orbit, and the mission will be delayed for a year due to the cancellation of Russian services.
The biggest symbol of space cooperation with Russia, dating back to the 1990s, when the Soviet Union fell, is still the International Space Station (ISS).
The ISS consists essentially of two segments, one American and one Russian.
The head of Roscosmos recently warned of the effect of sanctions on his own plans. The Progress spacecraft, for example, keeps the ISS in its orbit.
On Thursday, Aschbacher ruled out an impact on the ISS's security. “Operations are stable and secure,” he said.
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