The European rover of the ExoMars mission, scheduled for launch in 2016, is one of the largest robotic exploration vehicles ever created, and also among the most complex ones. However, because of soaring costs associated with the mission, the manager decided to drop one of the planned instruments from the program, so as to keep funds flowing, and release some of the financial tensions looming over the project. The Humboldt payload, which was supposed to analyze the Martian weather patterns and to look for earthquakes (Marsquakes), was the one flagged for elimination.

Officials from the European Space Agency (ESA), which is funding the ExoMars mission, made the announcement at the Paris Air Show recently, and the decision was received with mixed feelings. While some hailed the decision to keep costs in check, others said that at least another decade would pass until the next European rover would be launched to Mars, and that the data that could be obtained from Humboldt might be too valuable to eliminate from the schedule, the BBC News reports.

The removal of the passive scientific payload from the rover also gave ESA engineers some leeway for the other instruments, amidst concerns that the previous outfitting schedule tested the limits of the rover's weight to the maximum, ESA's Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain also said. The official added that the move shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, as he announced last November that he had promised governments involved in the project to keep the costs as close to 850 million euros ($1.18 billion) as possible. Without removing Humboldt, this objective would have been impossible to achieve.

Dordain also shared to the British news agency the three objectives he set forth for the engineers working on ExoMars – “To stay within the calendar; to try and stay within the money we have collected in November; and to keep the technology which I wish to demonstrate on Mars, which is landing, because we have never landed on Mars; moving on the surface; and drilling, because nobody has done that,” the official said.

Understandably, the science team behind the project was not thrilled about the decision. “I'm absolutely confident we will see the elements of the Humboldt payload eventually deployed on Mars, but probably in a more dedicated circumstance. For instance, instead of having one stationary station, is it not better if you are looking at an entire planet to have multiple stations?” David Southwood, the science director at the space agency, asked.