European agency pulls out from joint space exploration activities with Russia

The European Space Agency (ESA) has ceased cooperative activities with the Russian space agency Roscosmos. 

Currently, the agencies were working on three missions to the Moon namely Luna-25, 26 and 27. 

The ESA is an intergovernmental organization of multiple member states (including France and Germany) dedicated towards space exploration. 

The move was taken due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and follows a similar decision for the Mars mission- ExoMars, the agency said in a statement.

“As with ExoMars, the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the resulting sanctions put in place represent a fundamental change of circumstances and make it impossible for ESA to implement the planned lunar cooperation,” the ESA said. 

Following the Russian aggression against Ukraine, ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher has initiated a comprehensive review of all activities currently undertaken in cooperation with Russia and Ukraine. 

The ESA was initially planning to have a navigation camera called ‘Pilot-D’ on the Luna-25 probe, whose launch was lined up for the first half of this year. “The camera was going to be dismantled and the launch was taken off. Roscosmos had already been informed,” Aschbacher was quoted as saying by AFP. 

However, a second flight opportunity has already been secured on board a NASA-led Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission for the PROSPECT lunar drill and volatile analysis package (originally planned for Luna-27), maintained ESA.

An alternative flight opportunity to test the ESA navigation camera known as PILOT-D (originally planned for Luna-25) is already being procured from a commercial service provider, it further said. 

“Although all the elements of the ExoMars Rover mission (the launcher, carrier module, descent module and Rosalind Franklin rover) have now passed their flight readiness reviews, because cooperation with Roscosmos has been suspended,” the statement read.

The mission will not be launched in September this year. Instead, a fast-track study is now underway led by Thales Alenia Space of Italy to assess options for the way forward,” it added.