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Russia to start working on its Mars mission soon - Roscosmos

19 March 2022 09:10 (UTC +04:00)

Russian state-run space corporation Roscosmos will begin working on a mission to Mars soon instead of the ExoMars project, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin has told reporters, APA reports citing TASS.

"We have responsibility to our science, we must do this. <…> We are to begin working on putting the mission to Mars into practice soon," Rogozin said.

He doubted that a Mars rover would be necessary for the success of the mission.

"The landing module itself is a scientific station. It will be enough for the mission to succeed. We will simply repeat what we had already done before, but I have great doubts whether they [Europeans] will succeed without us," he added.

Rogozin stressed that Russia already has a carrier rocket and a launch facility.

"The Angara rocket is about to complete its flight trials, as stage two of the Vostochny Cosmodrome will be ready soon," he said. "It won’t be hard to recreate the Kazachok landing module, we have all designs at our disposal."

In his opinion, it will take six years or maybe more for the European Space Agency (ESA) to recreate the landing module for the ExoMars mission.

"Six years are the most optimistic scenario," Rogozin added.