The suspension has been upgraded to a termination.
It's official: Russia will no longer be part of Europe's life-hunting Mars rover mission, which is scheduled to launch in the late 2020s.
The European Space Agency (ESA) had been developing that mission in cooperation with its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, as part of a broader program called ExoMars.
The original plan called for the rover, named Rosalind Franklin, to launch atop a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, a site in Kazakhstan that's run by Roscosmos and the Russian military. Rosalind Franklin was also supposed to touch down with, and be deployed from, a Russian-built lander called Kazachok.
But ESA suspended Russian participation in the rover mission after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. That suspension will now be upgraded to a termination, ESA chief Josef Aschbacher just announced.
This decision has major implications for the mission, of course. For example, Rosalind Franklin had been scheduled to launch this September, but the need to find a new rocket and a new landing platform now make a liftoff before 2028 unlikely, mission team members have said. (Mars and Earth align properly for interplanetary launches just once every 26 months.)
Many other Russian space partnerships have frayed or dissolved as a result of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Russian rocket engines are no longer sold to American companies, for instance, and the French company Arianespace isn't launching satellites to orbit using Russian-built Soyuz rockets anymore, as it once commonly did.
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