Esa Aurora Rover - Still Planned For 2009? Options

[DavidVicari]

All the talk about Phoenix and MSL reminded me, isn’t ESA planning a rover for 2009?

Is 2009 still the planned launch year?

Any info about its capabilities? How will it compare to MSL?

What sort of EDL is it going to use?

[tedstryk]

It kind of suprises me that there is no test mission such as you describe planned. I hope the Europeans can get something to Mars this decade. I also wish the Russians would send some of those penetrators they sent on Mars '96. I have always thought that pride keeps them from getting back in the game. The only mission they have in the works is the Phobos-Grunt Phobos sample return mission, which will probably never fly. If they were willing to fly a small scale mission, with a flyby bus and copies of the Mars '96 penetrators, they could cheaply return to Mars and get a lot of science, assuming that the U.S. and European probes already in place would provide a data relay.