How the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Rover Will Drill for Samples on Mars

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has delayed its launch, but the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover is heading toward completion. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2018, but technical delays prevented it. Now, after dropping Russia from the project because of their invasion, the ESA says it won’t launch before 2028.

But when it does launch and then land on Mars, it will do something no other rover has done: drill down two meters into Mars and collect samples.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover (RFR) was initially called the ExoMars Rover. ExoMars was a two-part joint mission between the ESA and Roscosmos (Russia). The first part is the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which is currently in orbit around Mars. The rover is meant to follow the orbiter and has been renamed in honour of British chemist and DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin.

The rover will land in Oxia Planum, a 3.9 billion-year-old, 200-km-wide plain that contains one of the largest regions of exposed clay-bearing rocks on the planet. Oxia Planum was initially a candidate landing site for NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which eventually landed in Jezero Crater. There’s overwhelming evidence that this region was once watery. Oxia Planum is also geologically diverse, with plains, craters, and hills, and is flat and mostly free of obstacles.

Ancient water channels flowed into Oxia Planum in Mars’ past, and it’s possible that these flows carried evidence of life with them. In that sense, the water did some of the work for the rover. Rather than have to traverse a much larger area looking for evidence of life, nature might have delivered it to Oxia Planum for the RFR to find.

The RFR is aimed at astrobiology rather than geology, and if there’s any astrobiological evidence for it to find, it’ll be buried. The subsurface is protected from harmful radiation that could degrade evidence of life. As it moves around Oxia Planum, the RFR will use its ground-penetrating radar to study the subsurface. The radar is called WISDOM for Water Ice Subsurface Deposits Observation on Mars. Its data will be transmitted to Earth, where the ESA will create images of the subsurface, looking for ideal places to drill. Other instruments, like the Adron-RM neutron spectrometer, will help it find desirable water-rich deposits underground.

It will also discover buried obstacles that could make drilling difficult. Though the drill is robust and designed to operate in Mars’ harsh conditions, it could still be damaged.

The RFR also has wide-angle cameras on a mast to help it investigate its surroundings and find routes. The cameras will also identify hydrothermal deposits for further investigation.

Once a drilling site is selected, the RFR will drill down to a maximum depth of two meters, collecting either a rock core or loose material. After withdrawing its drill, it will place the sample in its Analytical Laboratory Drawer (ALD), where a suite of instruments will examine it for both chemical and morphological evidence of past life.

The suite of instruments is called the Pasteur Payload and includes spectrometers, imagers, molecular analyzers, and other instruments.

The mission will also showcase advanced technologies. It’ll use machine learning to analyze data from its Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer(MOMA) instrument. Its PanCam (Panoramic Camera) system is an advanced system that will provide high-resolution, 3D, multispectral images of the Martian landscape. It even has a miniaturized infrared spectrometer integrated into the drill, called Ma_MISS (Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies), to analyze the walls of the borehole as the drill penetrates the surface.

The RFR will have solar panels, but it’ll also be powered by an Americium power unit called a radioisotope heater unit (RHU). This is the first time Americium-241 has been used on a spacecraft, and its job is to keep the rover’s components warm in Mars’ frigid temperatures.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover will be more agile and autonomous than other rovers. It can drive over boulders as large as its wheels and should be able to safely navigate steep slopes. It also has the ability to lift its wheels if they’re stuck in sand or loose material. It can use its wheels to “walk” its way out of the sand.

The ESA deserves credit for severing its relationship with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and pivoting to complete the mission without Roscosmos’ involvement.

“The war in Ukraine has had a big impact on ExoMars. The spacecraft was ready to move to the launch campaign in Baikonur in April 2022 but was halted because of the invasion and the subsequent termination of the cooperation with Roscosmos, with whom the mission was partnered,” the ESA said in a statement in 2023. “The impact on the team and the disappointment for what happened was tangible, as a lot of effort had been spent in preparing this long-awaited mission.”

Russia was originally going to supply the launch vehicle and the landing platform for the rover. However, after Russia was ousted from the mission, the USA stepped in to provide the launch vehicle. The mission still needs a replacement landing platform, which is one of the reasons for the delayed launch. The ESA says that, unlike the original landing platform, the replacement will be simpler and won’t perform any science of its own. It won’t even have solar panels and once the rover is functioning, the platform will shut down a few days after deploying the lander.

This mission is about science, intellectual curiosity, and nature, not politics. Despite humanity’s woeful behaviour towards one another, our appetite for knowledge remains robust. Many missions suffer delays and other problems, so the RFR is in good company.

If the ESA can achieve its 2028 launch date, the RFR will arrive on Mars six to nine months later, most likely, and begin its scheduled seven-month-long mission to search for evidence of past life. Despite Russia’s bluster and terrible decisions, the mission will continue.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover is a remarkable machine. There’s still a lot of work to do, and the mission still has to land successfully, which is a daunting challenge. But if it does, it may finally provide an answer to one of our most pressing questions: Was there ever life on Mars?