By — News Desk News Desk By — Associated Press Associated Press Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/watch-live-house-hearing-reviews-nasas-planned-mission-to-mars Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter WATCH: House hearing reviews NASA’s planned mission to Mars Science Updated on Mar 1, 2022 2:34 PM EDT — Published on Mar 1, 2022 10:15 AM EDT The House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee held an online status update and review of NASA’s Artemis Initiative on Tuesday. Watch the hearing in the player above. The launch of a joint Europe-Russia mission to Mars this year is now “very unlikely” due to sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine, the European Space Agency said Monday. The agency said after a meeting of officials from its 22 member states that it was assessing the consequences of sanctions for its cooperation with Russia’s Roscosmos space agency. “The sanctions and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely,” for the Europe-Russia ExoMars rover mission, the agency said in a statement. The launch was already postponed from 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak and technical problems. It was due to blast off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan in September using a Russian Proton rocket. Postponing a launch often means waiting for months or years until another window opens when planets are in the right alignment. The goal is to put Europe’s first rover on the red planet to help determine whether there has ever been life on Mars. A test rover launched in 2016 crash-landed at Mars, highlighting the difficulty of putting a spacecraft on the planet. On Saturday, Roscosmos said it was pulling its personnel from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Several European satellites have been launched with Russian rockets from there, and more were scheduled over the coming year. By — News Desk News Desk By — Associated Press Associated Press
The House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee held an online status update and review of NASA’s Artemis Initiative on Tuesday. Watch the hearing in the player above. The launch of a joint Europe-Russia mission to Mars this year is now “very unlikely” due to sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine, the European Space Agency said Monday. The agency said after a meeting of officials from its 22 member states that it was assessing the consequences of sanctions for its cooperation with Russia’s Roscosmos space agency. “The sanctions and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely,” for the Europe-Russia ExoMars rover mission, the agency said in a statement. The launch was already postponed from 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak and technical problems. It was due to blast off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan in September using a Russian Proton rocket. Postponing a launch often means waiting for months or years until another window opens when planets are in the right alignment. The goal is to put Europe’s first rover on the red planet to help determine whether there has ever been life on Mars. A test rover launched in 2016 crash-landed at Mars, highlighting the difficulty of putting a spacecraft on the planet. On Saturday, Roscosmos said it was pulling its personnel from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Several European satellites have been launched with Russian rockets from there, and more were scheduled over the coming year.