NASA confirmed Thursday that SpaceX will launch ESA's Rosalind Franklin Mars rover on a Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center, targeting late 2028.
This arrangement exists because the mission's original launch vehicle, a Russian Soyuz rocket, became unavailable after Russia's invasion of Ukraine collapsed a decades-long partnership. The rover traces back to ESA's Aurora program, conceived in the early 2000s after NASA's 1997 Mars Pathfinder landing, with an original target launch date of 2009. What followed was nearly 25 years of delays, political fallout, and broken commitments.
The full article details how a flagship European science mission, designed to search for extraterrestrial life, ended up dependent on an American rocket from a private company. The path from Aurora to Falcon Heavy is the story worth reading.
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