The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced the suspension of cooperation with Russian state corporation Roscosmos, within the joint Russian-European project "ExoMars", to study Mars.
The ESA Governing Board unanimously adopted this decision because of the Russian war in Ukraine, according to a statement on the agency's website.
The project had planned to send an interplanetary spacecraft to Mars in August-September 2022 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton-M launch vehicle. The rover was going to gather evidence for the existence of life on the Red Planet now or in the future.
In response, the head of "Roscosmos", Dmitry Rogozin, has said that Russia will send a mission to Mars by itself.
"Yes, we will lose several years, but we will repeat our landing module, provide it with the Angara launch vehicle and conduct this research expedition from the new launch complex of the spaceport "East" independently," he said.
ESA President Josef Ashbacher believes that since the launch window has been lost in 2022, the launch of the ExoMars mission to the surface of the Red Planet with partners from France or the United States will now be possible no earlier than 2026.