ESA Forced To Seek Partners Outside Europe for ExoMars

摘要

The reorganization of Europe's ExoMars mission, which was ordered by European Space Agency (ESA) governments, will force program managers to move work out of Italy to other nations, and to explore wider cooperation with the United States and Russia. However, the restructuring will not affect the total cost of the mission or its scientific value, ESA Science Director David Southwood said. In an Oct. 23 interview, Southwood said the total cost estimate for ExoMars is about 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion). Because ESA member states voted to limit the agency's expenditures on ExoMars to 1 billion euros, ESA now must seek a much deeper involvement in the program by nations outside Europe than it originally had planned. At the same time ESA governments ordered the agency to cap its budget at 1 billion euros, they also agreed to push back the ExoMars launch from early 2016 until late 2013. "I don't like the delay," Southwood said. "I take it almost as a personal defeat. But we will now use the additional time to review the instruments to be carried and find the equivalent of 200 million euros in cooperation. NASA and the Russian space agency are the most obvious partners and we're talking to both. Canada also may be interested."