ESA plans to approach NASA after Russia’s expulsion from Mars mission

The European Space Agency (ESA) may seek closer ties with NASA on its upcoming missions, especially the ExoMars rover, after it became clear that ESA needed to “cut” its ties with Russia, said agency director-general Josef. Aschbacher.

“It’s certainly an option we’re looking at, no decision has been made yet, but one option we’re also looking at is working more closely with NASA,” Aschbacher told Becky Anderson at Connect the World at NASA. CNN this Friday (25th).

ESA has suspended its mission to launch Europe’s first planetary rover, intended to look for signs of life and investigate the history of water on Mars in the past.

The rover, known as ExoMars and Rosalind Franklin after the English chemist and DNA pioneer, was designed by ESA and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency. The mission was supposed to launch in September of this year, but ESA member states voted to suspend the project, despite its late stage after 40 years of development.

“Geopolitically, it is clear that we need to sever our ties with Russia, and that decision was made by member states,” Aschbacher said. “So yeah, it’s really unfortunate for all of science and technology and the engineers who have been working on this for four decades. But there is no other choice to make.”

Dmitry Rogozin, director general of the Russian space agency, described ESA’s position as “frantic”, saying in a Chinese television interview that Roscosmos “considers further cooperation impossible”.

Despite this lack of cooperation with Russia making “an impact” on ESA’s work, Aschbacher said the agency has “options”.

“Certainly, from a technological point of view, we can do without the Russian experience we have so far,” said Aschbacher. However, he highlighted that “of course we have to unravel what has been built over many decades”.

space station loops

There are currently four NASA astronauts, five Russian cosmonauts and one European astronaut aboard the International Space Station and relations are “professional”, according to Aschbacher.

Rogozin previously said sanctions against Russia could “destroy” relations on the space station, but Aschbacher denied it, saying that “regardless of nationality or origin, astronauts are a team that needs to work together.”

Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly told CNN last year that “these earthly political tensions are never transmitted to space“. Kelly and Rogozin recently traded barbs on Twitter, but the retired astronaut is backing off the war on Twitter.

However, one of the ESA’s main concerns is cyber attacks, which Aschbacher told CNN that have increased recently.

“We are regularly observing the situation very carefully day and night. As you can imagine, we recognize some intensification of the attempts. But I must say that our system is quite resilient,” he said.

He declined to say how many attempted cyber attacks came from Russia.