France Set to Reduce the Size of ESA's Mars Rover

Officials from the French space agency CNES announced on Wednesday that a thorough reassessment of the budget for the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission was in order, amidst fears that constraints might affect the 2016 mission, at a time changes would not be possible. The experts advocate the necessity of a downsizing in the mission to ensure that the costs do not outweigh the benefits of Europe's first rover on the Red Planet.

Speaking at a press briefing in Paris, Richard Bonneville, the deputy director for science at CNES, said that, while France remains a big supporter of the ExoMars mission, it must insist that costs are cut at this stage of the project, rather than later, when price overruns and even delays in the program are inevitable. The main challenge for the budget is to get approved by the European governments contributing to ESA, especially now, under the global financial crisis, when expenses on all major projects supported by the European Union are cut.

 

Last November, the most important countries involved in the ExoMars project, Italy, Germany, France and the UK, announced that they could not afford to pay 1.2 billion euros (roughly $1.6 billion) on the mission to Mars, but said that an 850 million euro bill sounded more reasonable. In addition to these problems, the European Space Agency also faces growing pressure from the EU to seek drastic cost cuts by looking outside the Union for help.

 

Essential to international cooperation is the Proton delivery vehicle that will be supplied free of charge by the Russian Federation. This measure will offset more than 150 million euros, which would otherwise have to be spent on a European-built Ariane V vehicle. However, no matter the cooperation between the Russians and the Europeans, it's very possible that the ExoMars mission will be subjected to even more cuts.

 

That's why the French advocate the necessity of doing this now, simply because, if delays occur later on in the mission schedule, it may be possible for ESA to miss the 2016 launch window, and to have to wait a few more years before it could get started with ExoMars.