ExoMars travelling on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy

The European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission, which aims to land the first European rover on Mars, will be launched onboard a NASA/SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The launch is scheduled to take place in late 2028.

The ExoMars mission aims to search for signs of past or present life on Mars, and to better understand the planet’s environment, particularly below the surface.

The Rosalind Franklin rover is equipped with a 2-metre-long drill to probe and collect samples of the Red Planet deeper than any previous mission. The Rosalind Franklin rover will join NASA’s Perseverance rover with the overall goal of collecting, and eventually returning, samples which may contain information about the presence of life on Mars.

The Descent Module, containing the rover, will decelerate through the Martian atmosphere by deploying a series of parachutes. The parachute system, designed and qualified by Vorticity, includes the largest parachute ever flown on Mars. The sequence has been fine tuned to deliver the rover safely to its landing site at Oxia Planum in 2030.

For more information about the high altitude drop testing Vorticity conducted to qualify the parachute system for the Martian descent, see the case study.

[This article is summarised from an article published by ArsTechnica on the 17th of April, 2026.]
[Image in banner courtesy of SpaceX, shows a Falcon Heavy launching with NOAA's GOES-U satellite on June 25, 2024]