Tests Of Russian Module For Mars Landing To Be Over In April 2020- Roscosmos Documents

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd May, 2019) The Russian module, which will land on Mars within the ExoMars-2020 joint mission with the European Space Agency (ESA), will be completed in August 2019 and its testing will be finished in April 2020, according to the Russian Roscosmos State Space Corporation documents, obtained by Sputnik.

According to the documents, the manufacture of the module will be completed on August 22, 2019, while further work, including its testing, will be over on April 14, 2020.

ExoMars is a joint mission of the ESA and Roscosmos. ExoMars -2020 is the second stage of the joint project. The first stage of the project included the launch of the European Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli Demonstrator Module. Schiaparelli failed to achieve a soft landing, crashing on the surface of Mars in October 2016.

The ExoMars- 2020 mission will include the launch of a European Mars rover and the landing module developed in Russia. The Russian landing platform, the final assembly which is being conducted by Lavochkin NPO, will be equipped with 11 Russian and two European scientific instruments. The Mars rover will have seven European and two Russian scientific devices on board.

The mission is expected to be launched on July 25, 2020, and planned to reach Mars in March 2021.

Earlier in May, a representative of Russian space agency Roscosmos told Sputnik that the Russian-European ExoMars-2020 probe would be launched atop the Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome along the trajectory which runs beyond the territory of China, unlike the ExoMars-2016 mission.