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The ExoMars program stands as a bold endeavor by the European Space Agency (ESA) to deepen humanity’s understanding of the Red Planet. Designed to study Mars’ atmosphere, surface, and subsurface, this initiative blends scientific curiosity with advanced engineering. Partnering with international players like NASA, ExoMars has weathered delays and geopolitical shifts to pursue its goals. As of February 2025, the program is moving forward with a clear plan, centered on the upcoming launch of the Rosalind Franklin rover in 2028. This article provides a detailed look at the program, its objectives, technical details, and current status, offering readers a window into Europe’s Martian exploration efforts.
The ExoMars Program: A Two-Part Journey
ExoMars unfolds in two distinct missions, each tackling different aspects of Mars’ mysteries. The first mission kicked off in 2016 with the launch of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), a spacecraft tasked with sniffing out faint gases in Mars’ atmosphere. The second mission, still in development, features the Rosalind Franklin rover, which will roam the Martian surface to search for signs of past life. Together, these efforts form a cohesive strategy to piece together Mars’ history and its potential to have once harbored life.
The program began as a collaboration between ESA and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, but global events in 2022 reshaped its path. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ESA cut ties with Roscosmos, prompting a rethink of the rover mission. Now, with NASA stepping in and European ingenuity at the helm, ExoMars is forging ahead, blending lessons from the past with a vision for the future.
Objectives: Probing Mars’ Past and Present
The ExoMars program sets out to answer big questions about Mars. The Trace Gas Orbiter focuses on the planet’s atmosphere, tracking gases like methane that might hint at biological or geological activity. Methane is a tantalizing clue—on Earth, it’s often tied to living organisms or volcanic processes, so finding it on Mars could point to something remarkable beneath the surface.
Meanwhile, the Rosalind Franklin rover takes a hands-on approach. Its primary goal is to hunt for evidence of past life by digging into Mars’ soil. Unlike other rovers that scrape the surface, this one will drill down 2 meters—about 6.5 feet—to reach layers untouched by the planet’s harsh radiation and weather. By analyzing these samples, scientists hope to uncover chemical traces or fossils that could reveal whether Mars was once a living world. The rover’s landing spot, Oxia Planum, is a clay-rich region that likely held water long ago, making it a prime target for this search.
Technical Specifications: Tools for the Task
The ExoMars missions rely on sophisticated machinery tailored to Mars’ challenges. The Trace Gas Orbiter, orbiting roughly 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the planet, carries four key instruments. These include cameras for mapping and spectrometers to analyze atmospheric gases, all powered by large solar panels that keep it running years after its 2016 arrival.
The Rosalind Franklin rover, weighing in at about 300 kilograms (660 pounds), is a mobile science lab. Its standout feature is a 2-meter drill, the deepest ever sent to Mars, capable of collecting samples from beneath the surface. Once retrieved, these samples go to an onboard laboratory equipped with tools like a mass spectrometer and infrared sensors to study their makeup. The rover rolls on six wheels, built to handle Mars’ rocky terrain, and uses solar panels for power, supplemented by NASA-provided Radioisotope Heater Units to stay warm during frigid nights. A new European lander, replacing the Russian design, will carry the rover to the surface, using parachutes and thrusters for a soft touchdown.
Current Status as of February 2025
As of February 2025, ExoMars is on a steady course toward its next milestone. The Trace Gas Orbiter remains fully operational, beaming back data on Mars’ atmosphere and serving as a relay for other missions. The Rosalind Franklin rover, though delayed from earlier plans in 2018, 2020, and 2022, is now slated for launch in October 2028, with a Mars landing expected by November 2030.
The past few years brought hurdles. The 2022 split with Roscosmos forced ESA to scrap Russian components, including a launch rocket and landing platform. By late 2022, ESA secured funding from its Member States to rework the mission. NASA’s return in May 2024 was a game-changer, offering a U.S. rocket and critical hardware. The rover itself, largely complete before the 2022 delay, is undergoing maintenance while the new lander takes shape. Building and testing this lander will take several years, aligning with the 2028 timeline. With international cooperation and technical know-how, ExoMars is poised to deliver its rover to Mars after a decade of perseverance.
Summary
ExoMars reflects Europe’s determination to explore Mars through a blend of orbital and surface missions. The Trace Gas Orbiter continues to shed light on the planet’s atmosphere, while the Rosalind Franklin rover prepares to dig into its past. With cutting-edge tools and a clear focus on science, the program tackles questions about life beyond Earth. As of February 2025, the mission stands on solid ground, with a launch planned for 2028 and a team effort spanning continents. The road ahead promises new discoveries about Mars, one drill sample at a time.
Appendix: Significant Program Milestones
- March 14, 2016: Trace Gas Orbiter launches successfully from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, aboard a Russian Proton rocket.
- October 19, 2016: TGO enters Mars orbit; the Schiaparelli lander, a test module, crashes during descent.
- 2018: Initial launch window for the Rosalind Franklin rover passes due to technical delays.
- 2020: Second planned launch for the rover is postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and unresolved issues.
- March 2022: ESA suspends cooperation with Roscosmos, halting the rover’s 2022 launch.
- November 2022: ESA Member States commit funding to redesign the rover mission without Russian involvement.
- May 2024: NASA rejoins ExoMars, agreeing to provide launch and hardware support.
- February 2025: Program progresses with the rover set for a 2028 launch and a new European lander in development.
- October 2028: Scheduled launch date for the Rosalind Franklin rover.
- November 2030: Expected landing of the rover on Mars’ Oxia Planum.
10 Best Selling Books About Mars Exploration
Nonfiction about Mars exploration spans rover engineering, mission operations, planetary science, and the long scientific search for habitability and life on the Red Planet. The selections below focus on widely read, general-audience titles that center on Mars missions, Mars rover fieldwork, and how evidence from orbiters, landers, and rovers reshaped what is known about Mars.
Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet by Steve Squyres
Written by the mission’s principal scientist, this book follows the Mars Exploration Rover program from concept to surface operations, emphasizing how engineering constraints shaped scientific decisions. It explains how Spirit and Opportunity turned rover driving, remote geology, and long-duration fieldwork into a new model for robotic Mars exploration.
Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity’s Chief Engineer by Rob Manning and William L Simon
This insider account explains how Curiosity was designed, tested, and delivered to the Martian surface, with attention to the project decisions that managed risk across launch, cruise, entry, descent, and landing. It connects the rover’s engineering choices to the mission’s science goals, showing how hardware capabilities shaped what Curiosity could measure on Mars.
The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job by Emily Lakdawalla
This book breaks Curiosity into its major subsystems – mobility, power, communications, computing, and instruments – describing how each part supports daily surface operations and science campaigns. It presents the rover as an integrated system, explaining how requirements, constraints, and redundancy combine to keep a long-lived Mars rover productive in a harsh environment.
Sojourner: An Insider’s View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission by Andrew Mishkin
Centered on Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover, this narrative shows how a small team executed a high-profile Mars landing and early rover operations under tight budgets and timelines. It highlights the practical realities of mission planning, surface commanding, and troubleshooting when a robot is operating millions of miles away.
Discovering Mars: A History of Observation and Exploration of the Red Planet by William Sheehan and Jim Bell
This history connects early telescopic observations and debates about “canals” to the spacecraft era of orbiters, landers, and rovers, showing how evidence replaced speculation over time. It frames Mars exploration as a cumulative scientific process, where better instruments and better maps steadily reshaped what researchers believed about Martian geology and climate.
The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World by Sarah Stewart Johnson
Blending planetary science with the history of Mars missions, this book traces how ideas about habitability evolved from early flybys to modern rover field science and sample-focused strategies. It explains why the search for life on Mars shifted toward geochemistry, ancient environments, and biosignature reasoning rather than simple “yes/no” experiments.
The Search for Life on Mars: The Greatest Scientific Detective Story of All Time by Elizabeth Howell and Nicholas Booth
This account surveys decades of Mars exploration through the single question of whether Mars ever hosted life, using shifting mission designs and evidence standards as the narrative thread. It emphasizes how modern missions build on Viking-era lessons by targeting ancient environments, organics, and contextual geology rather than relying on one decisive test.
Mars: Uncovering the Secrets of the Red Planet by Paul Raeburn
Designed for nontechnical readers, this book pairs an accessible explanation of Mars science with a mission-focused look at how spacecraft imagery and measurements changed the public’s view of the planet. It situates major discoveries in the context of evolving exploration tools, from orbiters and landers to the systems that enabled detailed surface investigation.
The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must by Robert Zubrin
This book argues for a practical pathway from robotic Mars exploration to human missions, emphasizing architectures that reduce complexity and cost by using local resources and straightforward mission design. It ties the rationale for Mars missions to engineering feasibility, political decision-making, and the long-term scientific value of sustained presence and fieldwork on the surface.
The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars by Simon Morden
This book treats Mars as a changing world, describing how geology, atmosphere, water history, and impacts produced the planet explored by modern spacecraft and rovers. It connects natural history to exploration results, showing how mission data refined ideas about ancient lakes, climate transitions, and where the strongest habitability evidence might be found.
