Moscow (Web Desk): Russia will start work on its own Mars mission given that the European Space Agency (ESA) has suspended a joint project in the wake of the Ukraine invasion.
The ESA announced that it would be impossible to continue cooperating with Russia on the ExoMars mission. A Russian rocket had been due to transport a European-made rover to Mars later this year.
“In the very near future we will start working on the implementation of a mission to Mars,” said Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roskosmos, Russia’s space agency.
Rogozin said there were “big doubts” about what the ESA could do without Russia, which already had a rocket, a launch site and the landing module. The ESA would need at least six years to develop its own module, he said.