NASA picks SpaceX Falcon Heavy to launch European Mars Rover

NASA is supporting ESA's Rosalind Franklin Mission to Mars, including providing the launch vehicle. NASA has picked SpaceX to launch the European rover.

New Delhi: NASA has announced that it has selected the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the Rosalind Franklin Rover of the European Space Agency, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, targeting opportunities no sooner than late 2028. The European Space Agency is responsible for providing the Rosalind Franklin rover for surface operations, the carrier module and the landing platform. NASA is supporting the mission through the Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation (ROSA) project, and is providing the launch vehicle, the propulsion system for the lander, radioisotope heater units (RHUs) for the rover, and the Mars Molecule Analyser science experiment.

While there have been astrobiology-oriented missions before, such as Curiosity and Perseverance, the Rosalind Franklin rover will be the first to search Mars for signs of past and present life. The target landing site is the Oxia Planum, which has an abundance of evidence of the wet past of Mars, a high potential for biosignature preservation because of clays in the region, a diverse geology, and a terrain that is suitable for landing an interplanetary probe. NASA competitively awarded the firm-fixed-price launch service task to SpaceX under the service contract.

What is there at Oxia Planum?

Oxia Planum is rich in clays, and is surrounded by ancient valley systems, all indicating a water past. There are also signs of volcanic activity in the region, with material overlaid on top of the clay and other aqueous deposits. This would have preserved any subsurface imprints by life forms, with the deposits exposed to erosion for only a few hundred million years. This provides the Rosalind Franklin Rover with an excellent opportunity to look for remnants of microbial life that may have been naturally preserved. The six-wheeled rover will explore the region over the course of its mission. Oxia Planum was also a candidate landing site for NASA’s Perseverance Rover.

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