NASA Begins Implementation for ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Mission to Mars

NASA has given approval for the agency’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation (ROSA) project to begin implementation, underscoring the agency’s continued partnership with ESA’s (European Space Agency) Rosalind Franklin mission. The mission is led by ESA and that agency is responsible for providing the spacecraft, including the carrier module, the landing platform, as well as the rover and surface operations.

Scheduled to launch in 2028, Rosalind Franklin will be the first Mars rover to search for signs of past or present life under the Red Planet’s surface. The ROSA project will provide designated hardware and services to ESA in support of the Rosalind Franklin mission, including the launch service, braking engines for the rover’s lander platform, and radioisotope heater units for the rover’s internal systems. The project also includes specialized electronics and a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer for the Mars organic molecule analyzer science instrument, which will search for the building blocks of life in samples collected at the rover’s landing site, Mars’ Oxia Planum.

In early 2024, NASA and ESA signed a Memorandum of Understanding formalizing an agreement to expand NASA’s work on the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover. Later that year, the KDP-A/B review approved ROSA’s formulation start in Phase B, and the project successfully passed all the success criteria of its Preliminary Design Review.

NASA has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the Rosalind Franklin mission from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission is targeting opportunities to launch no earlier than late 2028.

NASA’s Launch Services Program manages the launch service for this international effort and the agency competitively awarded the firm‑fixed‑price launch service task order under the indefinite‑delivery/indefinite‑quantity NASA Launch Services II contract.