Space
Europe postpones Mars mission over ExoMars rover issue and Coronavirus
The European Space Agency (ESA) announced that its ExoMars rover would not fly this year. The mission, a collaboration with the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), was set to launch this summer. However, the launch has been postponed to 2022 due to technical issues and the logistical impact due to the global Conoavirus outbreak.
“This is a very tough decision, but it’s, I’m sure, the right one,” ESA Director General Jan Wörner said during a news conference at ESA’s headquarters in Paris after consulting with the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. “The parties had to recognise that the final phase of ExoMars activities are compromised by the general aggravation of the epidemiological situation in European countries.”
“We agreed together it’s better to go for success than just to go for launch at this time,” Wörner said. “Although we are close to launch readiness, we cannot cut corners. Launching this year would mean sacrificing remaining essential tests.”
The ExoMars rover is Europe’s first Mars rover. Named after Rosalind Franklin, a British pioneer of DNA science, the robotic explorer will search for signs of life on the red planet’s surface. Wörner said the agency needs more time to troubleshoot issues with the spacecraft’s parachute system as well as precise electronics, so the delay is necessary.
Also, the recent coronavirus outbreak that’s spreading around the globe isn’t helping. So instead of rushing, the team is taking the next two years to conduct extensive testing and make sure they get it right.
“We have made a difficult but well-weighed decision to postpone the launch to 2022,” Rogozin said in a statement. “I am confident that the steps that we and our European colleagues are taking to ensure mission success will be justified and will unquestionably bring solely positive results for the mission implementation.”
The ExoMars rover is a follow-on to ESA’s ExoMars Orbiter mission, which reached the red planet in 2016. That mission consisted of two parts: the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli lander, a technology demonstrator. Unfortunately, the Schiaparelli crash-landed during its descent to the Martian surface.
Landing a spacecraft on Mars is hard. The planet’s atmosphere is thinner than what we see on Earth, and as such its takes a combination of sophisticated tools, including heat shields, retrorockets, and even giant, inflatable airbags, to safely touch down on the surface.
-
If anyone of those techniques fails, the spacecraft will crash, which is what happened with Schiaparelli.
Despite being around for decades, parachutes are still pretty tricky, especially using them on another planet. ESA engineers have made many adjustments to the parachute system, but keep seeing the same result: they rip as soon as they deploy. Test, after test, the chutes failed. Engineers have tried reinforcing them with Teflon to make them slide out of their bags easier, but no luck.
ESA even tried to seek advice from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which has built every single rover on Mars and, unfortunately needs more time to collaborate on parachute design. Because there’s only a limited window of launch opportunity, ESA officials decided to make the tough call to postpone until the next Mars window opens in 2022.
Appreciate @esa and @roscosmos for making the tough decision to postpone @ESA_ExoMars to 2022. Launching & safely landing a spacecraft on Mars are extremely demanding and require many technologies & systems to function perfectly. Your work is inspiring everyone to do hard things. https://t.co/ttPzDyQJWa
— Thomas Zurbuchen (@Dr_ThomasZ) March 12, 2020
The rover and its launcher, a Russian Proton rocket, are ready to go. The agency has more parachute tests in the works, including high-altitude drops.
-
Additionally, Wörner said the team discovered issues with the descent module’s electronic equipment, which are essential to the mission’s success. This piece of equipment controls functions like spacecraft power, propulsion, and even parachute control. It will take some time for the bugs to be fixed.
“Due to the troubleshooting of these anomalies at system level, the final version of the flight software has been delayed, and there is not enough time to fully test it before a 2020 launch and gain the confidence we need,” Wörner said.
You can technically launch to Mars anytime, but space agencies around the world choose specific windows that open every two years. During this time, Mars and Earth are in line, so that it takes less time and uses less fuel. In 2022, that window is open from August to October.
Once it reaches the Martian surface, the rover will study an ancient lake bed. It will scour the red planet’s surface in search of biosignatures, or signs of life.
SpaceX performed a secret test on a specific portion of Starship with its recent 13th test flight last week, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
Starship’s 13th test flight took place last Friday, and in many aspects, it was one of the most overwhelmingly successful launches in the project’s history.
All of the mission objectives were met without incident, both the Super Heavy Booster and Ship managed to perform safe splashdowns in the Gulf of America and the Indian Ocean, respectively, and the deployment of Starlink satellites came and went without any complications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
However, there was more on the agenda for SpaceX with Flight 13. Musk revealed an internal test of the ship’s heat shield tiles, as the space exploration company wanted to push them to the limits after previous issues.
Many noticed that Starship’s initial launch seemed to be more accelerated than normal, and that was not a mistake. Musk revealed that SpaceX decided to give Flight 13 an intentionally aggressive acceleration rate in an effort to test how well the tiles would remain attached to the ship:
-
This flight intentionally had much higher acceleration to test how well the heat shield tiles would remain attached at high dynamic pressure.
Test was successful.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
SpaceX had issues with some of the heat shield tiles remaining attached early on in the Starship program. The first six test flights presented some kind of anomaly with them, so the company’s big focus with them was to figure out a way to keep them intact through the duration of the flight.
Things truly improved as Flight 10 showed that ceramic tiles generally stayed attached to the ship far better due to refined attachment, as SpaceX utilized pins instead of adhesives. Flights 10 through 13 truly showed some clear progress with the heat shield tiles, and this latest test seems to be where some real progress was noticed, especially by Musk.
The 13th Starship launch last Friday was the second with Starship V3, SpaceX’s latest and greatest iteration of the spacecraft. Goals and ambitions are getting even grander as the project continues to progress. Musk has already hinted that SpaceX will likely try to catch Starship with Flight 14.
-
Just hours after Starship Flight 13 achieved a successful soft splashdown of its upper stage in the Indian Ocean on July 24, Elon Musk announced an ambitious next step for the company’s next launch of the rocket.
“Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on [the] next flight,” the SpaceX CEO posted on X on Friday.
That “next flight” is expected to be Flight 14. The plan involves returning the Starship upper stage, commonly called the “ship,” to the Starbase launch tower in Texas and catching it mid-air using the same mechanical “chopsticks” arms that have already proven themselves with the Super Heavy booster.
Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
A successful catch would mark the first time an orbital-class upper stage has been recovered this way, advancing SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability for the entire vehicle.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower-catch technique multiple times with Super Heavy. The first successful catch came on Flight 5 in October 2024, when Booster 12 was plucked from the sky by the Mechazilla arms. Subsequent flights, including those involving Boosters 14 and 15, repeated the feat. Several of those recovered boosters were later inspected, refurbished, and flown again, proving the system’s viability for quick turnaround.
-
Traditional reusable rockets, such as SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 or Blue Origin’s New Shepard, land on legs either on land or droneships. Rocket Lab has recovered its small Electron first stages by helicopter, but those are far lighter vehicles.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), completed a catch of its booster on July 10. They are the only entity besides SpaceX to attempt and complete the feat.
Flight 13 provided encouraging data. The ship executed a controlled reentry, flipped, and soft-landed intact in the ocean after deploying Starlink satellites, offering the first clear post-splashdown views of an undamaged heat shield. The Super Heavy booster, meanwhile, experienced a harder splashdown in the Gulf of America.
Musk has previously stressed that ship catches would only follow multiple successful soft ocean landings to minimize risk of debris over land.
If Flight 14 succeeds, SpaceX would take a major stride toward routine, rapid reuse of both stages—critical for lowering launch costs and supporting ambitious plans for lunar and Mars missions. For now, teams are reviewing the Flight 13 data. Should everything check out, the next Starship flight could deliver one of the most spectacular recoveries in aerospace history.
-
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
-
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.6 review: a rare regression, but some bright spots
Musk’s massive Terafab project will get final location soon
