The European Space Agency (ESA) announced today the break of its collaboration with its Russian counterpart, Roscosmosfor Moon 25, 26 and 27, three projects aimed at exploring our satellite before humans walk on it again. It is not the first great mission that has been cut short in Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine. ESA also had to cancel the launch of ExoMarsplanned for the end of this year. With it, the first European rover would have been placed on Mars, but Russia broke off its collaboration as a complaint about the sanctions imposed by the European Union.
Since then there have been many more missions and projects from other countries that have had to be canceled for the same reason. From the launch of the British OneWeb satellites to the Icarus project, aimed at monitoring the movements of animals from International Space Station (ISS). Even the collaboration with NASA on the latter could suffer the consequences of Russia’s anger.
But that does not make the announcement less surprising today by the Director General of ESA, Josef Ashbacher. The collaboration with Roscosmos has been broken. Now we will have to look for other alternatives, although in this case the most affected is not Europe.
Europe will no longer travel to the Moon with Russia
Moon 25, 26 and 27 are three naves, built by Roscosmos and aimed at exploring the Moon in a stage prior to the launch of the first manned missions to our satellite.
His releases, aboard Soyuz rocketsare -or at least were- planned for the next three years. However, now the situation could change.
This time it has not been Russia that has withdrawn from a mostly European project, as in the case of ExoMars. The opposite has happened, since the three missions are operated by Russia, either through Roscosmos or the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was planned that ESA would collaborate on tasks such as communications, precision landing, hazard avoidance, drilling, sampling, sample analysis, and ground support. That collaboration is the one that is withdrawn after the announcement of Aschbacher, who has assured to have made this decision in line with the sanctions imposed by the Union.
Some of Russia’s three missions are also supported by other space agencies, such as the Chinese (CNSA) and the Japanese (JAXA). Now it remains to be seen if they continue. What is clear is that, at least until circumstances change, ESA prefers to fly separately. Literally.
For this, they are already beginning to collaborate with private companies, following in a certain way in the footsteps of NASA and its association with large companies, such as SpaceX. They certainly need it, since the withdrawal of Russian personnel from the European spaceport in Kourou, as well as the veto on the use of Soyuz rockets in certain circumstances, will be a problem for future missions. As much as it has already been for ExoMars.