I Travelled to a Desert to See ESA's £1bn Mars Rover Put to the Test
An experimental rover will validate landing hardware and autonomous navigation for the Rosalind Franklin mission, with flight units due in the fourth quarter of 2026.
- On Thursday, the European Space Agency tested landing gear for the Rosalind Franklin rover in the Tabernas desert, using the 'Charlie' test vehicle to validate descent technologies for the ExoMars mission.
- Spanish group Sener developed the landing system to replace Russian components after the ESA ended cooperation with Roscosmos, maintaining the ExoMars mission's 2028 launch target.
- Sener Director of Space and Science Pinto said the gear must "deploy quickly and reliably at a crucial moment" to protect instruments during landing on the Martian surface.
- The Rosalind Franklin rover will drill up to two metres beneath the surface to search for signs of life, with flight units scheduled for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2026.
- Sener previously supplied antenna-pointing mechanisms for NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, and this Mars experience underpins the company's critical role in the current ExoMars mission.
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The European experience reveals an increasing evolution in Mars exploration techniques, with the ability of vehicles to move and make their decisions independently in a distant environment being tested.
The actual mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2028, will face a huge distance, so operating a vehicle on Mars represents one of the most...
The European mission ExoMars, which will travel to the 'red planet' in search of evidence showing possible past life with the robotic vehicle Rosalind Franklin, has used the desert of Tabernas (Almería) as a test bench to simulate the mission on real ground through the rover 'Charlie'.Continue reading...
The Tabernas Desert is once again becoming a small Martian laboratory this Thursday. In this Almeria landscape, recognized for its geological and mineralogical similarities with the surface of Mars, the ExoMars mission team has tested the prototype rover 'Charlie', reproducing the operations that in a few years will have to execute the Rosalind Franklin when it arrives on the red planet.
The field team simply loaded the instructions on Charlie and let the vehicle move and operate on its own.
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