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On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

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Airbus wins contract to build lander for Europe’s long delayed ExoMars Franklin rover

Low resolution cropped section of map
Geology map for Franklin landing site. Click for
original image. Click here for original article.

The European Space Agency (ESA) late yesterday announced that it has awarded Airbus a $194 million contract to build the lander that will place Europe’s long delayed ExoMars Franklin rover on the Martian surface, replacing the Russian lander that became unavailable when the ESA/Russian partnership ended after Russia invaded the Ukraine in 2022.

Airbus announced late March 28 (Eastern time) that it was selected by ESA and Thales Alenia Space, the prime contractor for the mission, to build the landing platform for that rover mission, scheduled to launch in 2028.

The landing platform is the part of the ExoMars spacecraft that handles the final phases of its descent to the Martian surface in 2030, including performing the final landing burn. After landing, the platform will deploy ramps to allow the ExoMars rover, named Rosalind Franklin, to roll onto the Martian surface.

This project was first begun in the early 2010s, with a launch date targeting 2018. Initially a partnership between ESA and NASA, Obama canceled all American participation in 2012. Russia picked up the slack, but then the mission had numerous technical problems that caused it to miss first that 2018 launch window, and then 2020 window as well. Then, just months before launch in 2022, Russia invaded the Ukraine, resulting in Europe ending all its partnership deals with Russia.

The mission is now working to launch in the 2028 window. We shall see if it can meet that date.

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One comment

  • Richard M

    Eric Berger also has an article up today about this development. There’s nothing new here; it is just a recap of ExoMars’ history — useful if you’re not familiar with its long and convoluted history.

    Eric opines: “The Trump administration is poised to push NASA’s exploration program to focus on Mars, and that will likely entail sending SpaceX Starships to the red planet with increasing frequency. SpaceX is aiming for the 2026 launch window for Mars and certainly will be targeting one or more Starships for late 2028. Will NASA, citing redundancy with Starship missions, pull the plug on ExoMars again? With ExoMars, the only certainty is to expect the unexpected.”
    https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/four-different-rockets-three-landers-and-two-decades-will-exomars-ever-launch/

    Berger is increasingly hostile to the administration and Elon’s involvement with it (check out his BlueSky feed, where he clearly feels more uninhibited) but maybe it’s not *totally* paranoid to wonder about NASA’s funding commitment to ExoMars. After all, it was the Obama Administration pulling out of it abruptly in 2012 that left ESA holding the bag the first time around — we’ve been to this rodeo before. But Jared Isaacman gets a vote, and given some of his past comments I would be very surprised if he would be happy seeing this modest commitment deep-sixed.

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