BREMEN, Germany – NASA will help Europe launch its long-delayed ExoMars rover searching for life on Mars, even though President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for NASA cuts cooperation in an effort to reduce spending on science.
The announcement was made in European Space Agency(ESA), a high-level meeting of the agency’s 23 member states, on Wednesday (November 25).
He ExoMars The Rosalind Franklin rover weighs 300 kilograms (660 pounds) Mars exploration robot equipped with a 2-meter (6.6 ft) drill to search signs of life beneath the Red Planet’s radiation-stricken surface.
The project, conceived in the early 2000s, has faced multiple setbacks on its way to the launch pad. The mission was originally planned in cooperation with NASA, but the US agency pulled out in 2012 after budget cuts imposed by the Obama administration, forcing ESA to seek support from Russia.
The rover, named after a British chemist who played a key role in the discovery of the structure of DNA, was due to take off atop a Russian Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in September 2022 and will descend to the Martian surface on a Russian-made landing platform a year later. But that plan changed in early 2022: ESA ties cut with the Russian space agency roscosmos in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Then NASA came back into the picture. At the end of 2022, ESA member states agreed invest an additional 360 million euros ($417 million) to build a new landing pad for the rover. NASA offered to provide a rocket, radioisotope heaters needed to protect the rover’s technologies in the frigid Martian climate, and slow down the retrorockets to safely lower the landing pad to the ground. Since new developments are needed, ESA set a new launch date for the rover in 2028.
But Donald Trump’s election victory last year nearly scuttled those plans, as Rosalind Franklin was among 20 scientific collaborations between ESA and NASA in Trump’s fiscal year. 2026 budget proposal removed. Since then, there has been speculation about whether ESA would have to seek additional funding to complete the mission on its own. NASA’s contribution to ExoMars is estimated at $375 million, according to the nonprofit space exploration advocacy group Planetary Society.
Speaking at the ESA Ministerial Council, Aschbacher confirmed that NASA will provide the three elements it had previously committed to.
“These confirmations have been given to us in writing, so this is a very important step,” Aschbacher said.
He added that NASA had already delivered a scientific instrument that Rosalind Franklin will carry: the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer Mass Spectrometer (MOMA-MS), which will be able to detect the smallest traces of organic materials in the samples drilled by the rover. The instrument, the ESA spokesperson said, is currently undergoing integration, testing and verification in Europe.
ExoMars is just one of Europe’s flagship scientific space missions caught up in NASA budget drama. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) gravitational wave The observatory made up of three innovative spacecraft is a joint project valued at about $3 billion. According to the Planetary Society, NASA was to provide $1 billion worth of technology for the mission, including onboard telescopes and lasers. He Venus The EnVision exploration probe is also supported by NASA. The US agency was to build an innovative synthetic aperture radar valued at around $300 million. That contribution has also been cut by the Trump administration.
Other planned missions, including the New Athena X-ray telescope and exoplanet Observer Ariel will be affected if Trump’s budget proposal is approved. However, both the US House of Representatives and Senate are working to restore at least some of that funding. ESA member states will negotiate the future direction and funding of the ESA on November 26 and 27, without knowing how the situation in the United States will be resolved.
Previously, a source familiar with the situation within ESA told Space.com that the agency is working on a rescue plan for LISA and EnVision and believes Europe could do it alone if necessary.
“We are discussing with our member states about their ambition to take responsibility for one or more elements of NASA in case we need to take recovery measures,” the source said. “By the middle of next year, we hope to be in a position to decide the way forward, with clarity on NASA funding and the ambition and funding of member states.”
Aschbacher previously revealed bold plans to secure a record budget of more than 22 billion euros ($25 billion) for ESA’s next three-year period, 5 billion more than the last budget agreed in 2022. However, the negotiations come at a tense period for Europe, with countries under pressure to increase their defense spending due to worsening tensions with Russia.
