European Mars Rover Rosalind Franklin Secures SpaceX Launch
NASA confirms SpaceX will launch the European Space Agency's Rosalind Franklin Mars rover, finally giving the long-delayed mission a reliable path to the Red Planet.
After a saga of broken promises and political tensions, the European Space Agency's (ESA) flagship Rosalind Franklin Mars rover has finally secured a reliable ride to the Red Planet. NASA announced that SpaceX will launch the rover, perhaps as soon as late 2028, aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The road to this launch has been anything but straightforward. The Rosalind Franklin mission can trace its origins back nearly a quarter-century, when the ESA first conceived a plan to send its own mobile robot to Mars, as a part of the Aurora program. The original plan was to launch the rover in 2009, with a Soyuz rocket supplied by Russia.
{{IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER}}Source: Ars Technica
