A mock-up of the Rosalind Franklin rover of the Russian-European ExoMars-2022 mission extracted soil from a depth of 1.7 meters during tests, Roscosmos reported, citing materials from the European Space Agency (ESA).
"The test model of the rover of the Russian-European ExoMars-2022 mission "Rosalind Franklin" for the first time drilled the ground and extracted samples from a depth of 1.7 meters - this is much deeper than any other rover has ever done, " the report says.
According to ESA, the greatest drilling depth on the Red Planet today is 7 cm. Drilling to a depth of up to two meters will allow us to study well-preserved organic material that was formed four billion years ago, when conditions on the surface of Mars were more similar to those on Earth.
"To recreate the level of Martian gravity, where the gravity is about one-third of the Earth's, the Rosalind Franklin twin rover is supported on cables by a special unloading device. As a result, the twin rover took soil from a depth of 1.7 meters and received a sample of cemented rock in the form of a pellet about 1 cm in size and 2 cm in length," Roscosmos said.
The media reported that the Russian Proton-M carrier rocket with the ExoMars station will launch on September 22, 2022 from the Baikonur cosmodrome.
