Europe's Upcoming ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Mission: Sample Processing | ESA
The intricate mechanisms of what will be the most sophisticated laboratory on Mars yet are revealed in this video on the European Space Agency's ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover. The Rosalind Franklin rover’s drill has a maximum reach of two meters—deeper than any other mission has ever attempted on the Red Planet. This depth allows access to well-preserved organic material from four billion years ago, when conditions on the surface of Mars were more like those on infant Earth.
After receiving a sample from the drill, Rosalind’s laboratory must prepare the sample to make a detailed study of its mineral and chemical composition. The rover’s Analytical Laboratory Drawer (ALD) mechanisms execute a pre-programmed choreography of sample manipulations to make sure that the instruments can do their job.
The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission is part of Europe’s ambitious exploration journey to search for past and present signs of life on Mars.
When can the Rosalind Franklin Rover be launched?
It will take at least 2-3 years to build and qualify a new European lander. Then it is down to launch windows. The best opportunities to launch to Mars occur every two years when Earth and Mars are optimally aligned. The earliest launch opportunity for the Rosalind Franklin Mission has been identified as 2028, which will see a two-year transfer to Mars. This balances the time needed to build the necessary mission elements with a good mission scenario of landing in 2030. The time of arrival on Mars is important, as we need to ensure at least six months of operations before the start of Mars’ northern hemisphere fall and winter when the atmosphere is generally more dusty, and when Mars’ global dust storms may happen. In this respect, it is better to adopt a longer transfer profile (two years) and land in a favourable time to perform the rover mission, than to make a shorter trip that brings the rover earlier to Mars, but too close to the start of the Global Dust Season, an event where the survivability of the rover cannot be guaranteed.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Exploration/ExoMars
Production: Mlabspace for ESA
3D Animation: ESA/Mlabspace
Release Date: Oct. 5, 2025
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