European Space Agency Stops Working With Russia on All Moon Missions

pcmag.com:

Russia isn't just losing support on the ground, its partners in space are also walking away due to the war in Ukraine.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has today announced it will no longer work with Russia on all current and future missions. That means Russia's State Space Corporation, better known as Roscosmos, can no longer rely on the ESA's cooperation for its planned Luna 25 lunar lander, Luna 26 lunar polar orbiter, and Luna 27 luna lander missions. The ESA had previously agreed to provide Roscosmos with communications, precision landing, hazard avoidance, drilling, sampling, sample analysis, and ground support.

That decision does cause a problem for the ESA, which had planned to use the Luna missions for some of its own technology. Alternative flight partners are being sought out, though, and the first of those has already been secured. The PROSPECT lunar drill and volatile analysis package planned for Luna 27 will now leave Earth courtesy of a NASA-led Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission.

Luna 25 was meant to include the ESA PILOT-D navigation camera, but an unnamed commercial service provider is expected to blast it into space instead. Planning is also underway to figure out how to get the PILOT precision landing and hazard avoidance technology, required for several other projects, to the Moon.

Although it's mostly positive news when it comes to securing new partners, as the BBC reported back in March, the ESA has already suspended the September launch of the ExoMars rover mission. Meanwhile, what does this do to Russia's mission schedule? It seems unlikely any of them will be able to go ahead now unless Roscosmos can somehow find Russian companies capable of providing the same services as the ESA.

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