Built by Airbus in Stevenage and operated by the European Space Agency, the Rosalind Franklin rover is slated for a 2028 launch and a 2030 Martian landing. Teams recently tested a prototype in Spain’s Tabernas desert to prepare for the mission’s deep-drilling search for ancient life.
The quest to determine whether life ever existed on the Red Planet is entering a rigorous preparation phase. The European Space Agency is readying its ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover for a 140-million-mile journey to Mars carrying instruments developed by researchers across Europe.
Desert Trials in Almería Test Autonomous Navigation and Radio Lag
In the arid Tabernas desert near Almería, Spain, engineers and scientists are running exhaustive trials on a prototype. Built with cheaper parts that can be repaired if damaged during field checks, the prototype allows researchers to practice complex maneuvers without risking delicate flight hardware. Before every test run, operators carefully erase human and vehicle footprints from the ground so that the rover’s cameras do not pick up unauthentic reference points that would never exist on Mars.
Operating a vehicle on another planet requires extraordinary patience. Because a radio signal traveling from an ESA command center to Mars takes anywhere from 4 to 21 minutes each way, real-time joystick driving is impossible. During the eight-day trial in Spain, team members directed activities from the Rover Operations Control Centre in Turin, Italy, rehearsing the exact communication lag that the mission will face. Susanne Schwenzer, an interdisciplinary scientist on the mission and professor of planetary mineralogy at the Open University, emphasized that mission success relies on a tight fusion of disciplines.
To get the most scientific benefit, all three need to work together. That’s exactly what we’re testing here.
Susanne Schwenzer, Open University
Drilling Deep Into Oxia Planum to Bypass a Sterile Crust
Previous landing craft and rovers on Mars have only managed to abrade rocks or scoop surface dust, with the deepest organic sampling reaching roughly 15 centimeters. That shallow reach has left samples vulnerable to billions of years of cosmic radiation, which breaks down organic molecules in the top layer. The Rosalind Franklin rover is designed to break past this limitation by carrying a drill system capable of boring two meters beneath the surface in search of pristine biological traces.
The spacecraft is scheduled to touch down at Oxia Planum, a region near the Martian equator featuring extensive clay-rich sedimentary deposits formed during an era when liquid water flowed freely. Once the drill reaches its target depth, extracted samples drop automatically through an aperture into a mobile laboratory drawer where onboard instruments crush and examine them for organic matter.
Panspermia Theories and the Search for a Common Terrestrial Ancestor
Roughly four billion years ago, Mars possessed a thick atmosphere, a protective magnetic field, and extensive lakes, rivers, and oceans. This habitable window coincided with the Late Heavy Bombardment period between 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago, when heavy asteroid and comet impacts could have delivered essential building blocks of life like amino acids to both Earth and Mars. Because Mars cooled faster than Earth, its core dynamo failed, causing its magnetic shield to collapse under solar winds and rendering the surface largely uninhabitable by 3.7 billion years ago.
If researchers discover preserved microbial life in the deep clay deposits, it could point toward panspermia—the concept that life can travel between planets or that both worlds were seeded from a common source. Professor Schwenzer noted the profound philosophical implications of such a discovery during the mission briefings.
If life is the same there, it may be that we are all from the same ancestor. Is panspermia possible? Is it possible for life to travel from one planet for another? We don’t know but these are all questions we have to answer.
Susanne Schwenzer, professor of planetary mineralogy at the Open University
Schwenzer added that finding independent evidence of past life would upend humanity’s perspective on the cosmos, calling the prospect almost frightening to think about, because it changes everything
.
British Universities Develop Instruments for ExoMars Mission
The mission represents a major collaborative effort across European institutions, including significant contributions from British universities. Researchers from Aberystwyth University’s physics and computer science departments have spent 15 years aiding the ExoMars program by developing scientific instruments and software. Aberystwyth is supplying test versions of the Enfys infrared spectrometer, which works alongside the PanCam panoramic camera system led by University College London to identify promising clay targets.
Getting the mission to this stage has required overcoming major geopolitical and logistical hurdles. Originally slated for a 2022 launch, the project faced delays from the COVID-19 pandemic and was severely disrupted when the Russian invasion of Ukraine forced the European Space Agency to sever ties with Roscosmos, which had been supplying key components.
