NPO Lavochkin publishes design of Russian Martian station

MOSCOW. March 26 (Interfax) - NPO Lavochkin, which previously worked on the ExoMars project, has published a design of a new Martian interplanetary station.

The sketch appeared in the company's corporate magazine Vestnik NPO Lavochkina.

The aim of the station is "to search for signs of life on Mars in the past and present time; to study the water/geochemical conditions on its surface and in its subsurface stratum with distribution in depth; to study gas mixtures and their sources in the atmosphere of the Red plant; to resolve scientific problems under conditions of a long-running stationary platform."

Earlier, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin announced plans to develop a new landing platform after European partners quit the ExoMars-2022 mission. The new mission would not include the rover Europe had been developing, he said.

On March 17 the Council of the European Space Agency (ESA) found it impossible to continue ExoMars-2022 cooperation with the Russian state space corporation.

After that Rogozin said that Roscosmos would be able to carry out its own Mars mission in a few years' time.