ESA refuses to cooperate with Roscosmos on ExoMars

PARIS. March 17 (Interfax) - The ruling council of the European Space Agency (ESA) has found it impossible to continue cooperating with Russia's Roscosmos state corporation on the ExoMars mission to study the Mars surface, the ESA said in a statement published on its website on Thursday.

According to the statement, ESA's ruling council held a meeting in Paris on 16-17 March and "unanimously acknowledged the present impossibility of carrying out the ongoing cooperation with Roscosmos on the ExoMars rover mission with a launch in 2022, and mandated the ESA Director General to take appropriate steps to suspend the cooperation activities accordingly."

The council also authorized ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher to carry out an industrial study to define the available options to implement the ExoMars rover mission.