COLORADO SPRINGS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th August, 2021) Launching the joint ExoMars mission next year is a priority for both the European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos, and the two agencies are committed to meeting the launch window of September 2022, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher told Sputnik.
Due to the varying orbits of Earth and Mars, optimal windows for launching spacecraft to the Red Planet are plotted for in advance. Missing windows may entail delays of months or even years.
"We need to make sure that we meet the launch window of September 2022. This is an extremely important priority and we are both committed to ensuring that the launch window is not missed," Aschbacher told Sputnik on the sidelines of the 36th Space Symposium. "We have still important work to do on ExoMars, because this is a joint Russian-ESA project and there are some technical issues which we still need to solve together."
He went on to emphasize that readying the project on time was "a priority at the moment for both Mr. [Dmitry] Rogozin and for myself."
Aschbacher noted that deliberations about the length of testing are underway at the moment.
"There's a discussion whether the tests or the duration of these tests need to be as long as currently planned, five months, or whether we can shorten them in order to recover some delays during the earlier phase of development," he explained.
Other matters, that need to be addressed, concern some industrial cooperation, the Director General added.
"I rely on Mr. Rogozin to do his utmost, obviously together with our ESA teams partners, to make sure that we can launch ExoMars next year," Josef Aschbacher stated.
The launch of the ExoMars mission is scheduled for the period between September 20 and October 1 of 2022 aboard a Proton-M carrier rocket from Baikonur. The mission itself consists of European and Russian hardware contributions, which will include a Russian lander named Kazachok and a European rover named Rosalind Franklin. If the launch window remains unchanged, they are expected to land on Mars on June 10, 2023.
