Europe's Mars mission may not get off ground

The situation in Ukraine means Europe's planned mission to Mars will almost certainly no longer go ahead this year, the European Space Agency has announced.

The ambitious project, which was to have included an exploration of the Martian terrain by the United Kingdom-built rover Rosalind Franklin, was made possible because of significant Russian input but now looks sure to be mothballed.

"Regarding the ExoMars program continuation, the sanctions (against Russia) and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely," the agency, which is known as the ESA, said in a statement. "ESA's director general will analyze all the options and prepare a formal decision on the way forward by ESA member states."

The mission had been slated for a September launch and the spacecraft was to have arrived at the red planet eight months later, with the help of Russian hardware, and particularly a Russian-built landing system.

The British-made rover robot, which started out as an idea back in 2005 and was assembled by Airbus UK, was then to have drilled down around 2 meters, in search of ancient traces of life.

Experts said it is unclear whether the project will ever go ahead now, because it had been scheduled for an optimum 10-day window in September and October, during which the planets were to have been ideally aligned. Missing that window of opportunity will likely mean the project cannot now proceed for at least two years, by which time the mission may no longer be as highly prized.

The UK, which invested 250 million pounds ($333 million) in the project, was understood to have been especially proud of the Rosalind Franklin rover, which was named after a British scientist who helped discover the structure of DNA.

The ESA said it will not rush its final decision on whether the project eventually goes ahead.

"We are giving absolute priority to taking proper decisions, not only for the sake of our workforce involved in the programs, but in full respect of our European values, which have always fundamentally shaped our approach to international cooperation," it said.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos has also distanced itself from working with its European counterparts and said on the weekend it will no longer fly its Soyuz rockets out of the ESA's Kourou spaceport, which is located in the France-controlled South American nation of French Guiana.

The BBC noted that the ESA has worked very closely with Roscosmos for many decades and will face a massive task if it now wants to disentangle European space projects from Russian involvement. The International Space Station, for example, was built as a collaborative effort involving both.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in Parliament last week he previously had been "broadly in favor of continuing artistic and scientific collaboration" with Russia.

"But in the current circumstances, it's hard to see how even those can continue as normal," he told lawmakers.