ExoMars 2022: Will Europe finally succeed in a surface mission to Mars?

So far, Europe has not had much luck with surface missions to Mars. No connection was established with the Beagle II probe in December 2003 (although it survived the flight through the atmosphere and the landing and began to decompose into a working configuration on the surface), and the Schiaparelli landing module fell from a height of about 3.7 km to the surface in October 2016. For completeness, we add that Beagle II was not a project ESA, but was a British instrument on the Mars Express mission. Will the winged “to the third of all good things” be confirmed? Today at 5:32 p.m., the ExoMars 2022 probe, consisting of the Kazačok landing platform and the Rosalind Franklin rover, will land on the surface of the fourth planet of the Solar System.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

The probe launched from Baikonur aboard a Russian Proton-M rocket with a Breeze-M upper stage on September 21, 2022, at the start of a twelve-day launch window. The assembly, which reached the interplanetary trajectory, bore the designation SC (Spacecraft Composite), while it consisted of two parts: the overflight stage CM (Carrier Module) and the descent module DM (Descent Module). The CM flyby stage handled all maneuvers during the journey from Earth to Mars. Today, his time will be fulfilled when he releases the DM lineup five minutes before 5 p.m. our time. Half an hour later, the CM burns up in the dense layers of the Martian atmosphere.

Conversely, in the case of the DM descent module, extinction in the atmosphere is undesirable, and the mission designers did everything possible to prevent something similar from happening to it. At 17:25 CET at an altitude of 120 km and at a speed of 5.8 km/s, it will enter the atmosphere, but it will be protected by a heat shield. The moment of entry is referred to as EIP (Entry Interface Point). We note that all times and altitudes may differ from those given in a real situation: we describe the ideal course of the mission, but the probe will react to the current conditions.

Kazačok landing platform during pre-flight preparation (Turin, March 2019)
Source: ESA

Within less than two minutes after entering the atmosphere, the DM will reach an altitude of 30 km, where it will be subjected to the greatest thermal stress. Another minute and a half later, at an altitude of 8 to 10 km, the braking parachute with a diameter of 16 m will be released: the speed of the DM at this time will be 470 m/s. The braking parachute will be used for 20 s to reduce the speed to 150 m/s, then it will be discarded and the main parachute (diameter 35 m) will take its turn. Another 10 seconds later, the speed drops below 65 m/s. At that moment, the now unnecessary heat shield is discarded and the undercarriage legs of the Kazačok platform are folded out. This is followed by a stop of the slow rotation in which the lineup has been until now. Then the landing radar is activated, which begins to “familiarize” with the surface. Six minutes after the first contact with the atmosphere, the DM is a kilometer above the surface, it has a speed of about 35 m/s, and there is less than a minute left before landing. The Kazačok landing platform with the rover is jettisoned and its braking rocket engines ignite. First, he performs an evasive maneuver to the side to avoid a collision with the upper cover of the DM and the parachute. Subsequently, the assembly “steps on the brakes” and reduces the vertical component of the descent speed to less than 2 m/s, with which Kazačok will also touch the surface of Mars in the Oxia Planum region at 5:32 p.m. our time.

Rover Rosalind Franklin on the Kazachok landing platform (Cannes, December 2020)
Source: ESA

The “seven minutes of terror” ends, the scientific program of the mission begins. There is no rush, so it will take ten sols to check the status of the platform systems and the rovers and look around the area. That is, approximately on Tuesday, June 20, we will see the moment when the Rosalind Franklin rover will leave the landing platform and touch the surface of Mars. A mission that has unimaginable scientific potential now really begins…

Around June 20, Rosalind Franklin will descend on the surface of Mars
Source: ESA

But everything is somehow different. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine (February 24, 2022), there was a dramatic cooling of international relations, and European-Russian cooperation in the exploration of Mars became one of the victims. On March 17, 2022, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher informed then Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin that ESA was withdrawing from the project. Since then, both sides have been looking for ways to save their part of the billion-dollar program. It won’t be easy, it won’t be quick, and it won’t be cheap—if at all possible. The Rosalind Franklin rover has a big challenge ahead of it—perhaps even bigger than the Mars landing itself.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

The author of the article (standing on the left), the director of the Brno Observatory Jiří Dušek (standing on the right) and the editor-in-chief of Kosmonautix Dušan Majer (sitting on the right) promised today a live broadcast from the landing of the ExoMars 2022 mission already in February 2021. But one thinks…
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