World (AFP)

Victim of technical difficulties aggravated by the global epidemic of coronavirus, the ambitious and delicate Russian-European mission ExoMars, intended to send a robot to the red planet, was postponed Thursday to 2022.

Symbol of cooperation between Russia and the European Union in times of strong diplomatic tensions, ExoMars aims to drill on Martian soil in search of signs of past life on this planet.

The launch, originally scheduled for summer 2020, is now postponed to August-September 2022, announced in a joint statement the two partners, the Russian space agencies Roskosmos and European (ESA).

At the end of a meeting, their two chiefs concluded that "new tests of the spacecraft with the final components and software" were "necessary".

They also "had to recognize that the final phase of ExoMars" was "compromised by the general worsening of the epidemic (of Covid-19) in European countries".

Roskomos chief Dmitri Rogozin said the decision was "difficult but well weighed". "It is mainly motivated by the need to maximize the robustness of all ExoMars systems and by the circumstances" related to the spread of the new coronavirus, he said, quoted in the statement.

The situation in Europe "practically did not allow our experts to carry out visits to partner industries," he explained.

ESA chief Jan Wörner said he wanted "to be 100% sure of a successful mission".

"We cannot accept any margin of error. More checks will ensure a safe journey and the best scientific results on Mars," he said.

Russia provides the launcher, the descent module (with European elements including parachutes) and the landing platform for ExoMars, while the robot, called Rosalind Franklin, is European. It includes a drill and a miniature research laboratory.

- Parachute problem -

ESA had recognized in August 2019 the existence of persistent problems on the mission's necessary parachute system, already raising fears of a postponement.

A test carried out in early August on the largest of the four parachutes responsible for allowing the smooth arrival of the robot and the landing module on the Martian surface had ended in failure.

Another test carried out at the end of May on all four parachutes (two main and two small which are used to deploy the large) had suffered the same fate.

Roskosmos and ESA said Thursday, "The latest dynamic extraction tests for ExoMars parachutes were successfully carried out at the Nasa laboratory" and "the main parachutes are ready for the last two high altitude fall tests in March in Oregon, United States. "

"All the necessary flight equipment has been integrated" into the Russian Proton rocket and the robot "recently passed the last test in France", added the two agencies.

Mars has a very tenuous atmosphere and the undercarriage braking system must be very efficient. The United States has so far been the only country to successfully operate robots on Mars.

In October 2016, as part of the first part of the ExoMars mission, Europe had failed in its attempt to land a landing demonstrator named Schiaparelli. Following contradictory information having misled the on-board software, the spacecraft had crashed on the surface of the red planet after a free fall at high speed. In contrast, the European TGO probe had been successfully placed into orbit.

"ExoMars will be the first mission to search for signs of life at depths of up to two meters below the Martian surface, where biological life signatures can be particularly well preserved," said Roskosmos and ESA.

This postponement of ExoMars comes at a time when astronauts preparing to leave on April 9 for the International Space Station have been confined within their training center near Moscow, so as not to risk being contaminated by the new coronavirus. .

© 2020 AFP