On April 16, 2026, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) officially approved the implementation of its Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation (ROSA) Project, part of the agency’s Mars Exploration Program. This milestone marks a critical transition of the joint ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Mission—led by the European Space Agency (ESA) and supported by NASA—from conceptual design to full-scale engineering development and execution. Scheduled for launch in late 2028, this international collaborative mission is poised to achieve a landmark breakthrough in Mars exploration: it will be the first Mars rover dedicated to systematically searching for signs of past or present life beneath the Red Planet’s surface.

I. Mission Orientation: Focusing on Mars’ Subsurface to Unlock Life’s Mysteries

Led entirely by ESA, the Rosalind Franklin Mission is responsible for providing the spacecraft, including the carrier module, landing platform, rover, and surface operations. NASA’s ROSA Project delivers targeted hardware and engineering services to support ESA’s efforts. Named after Rosalind Franklin, the pioneering scientist whose work was critical to understanding the structure of DNA, the rover’s core scientific objective is centered on Mars’ Oxia Planum—a 3.9-billion-year-old region rich in clay minerals and ancient aqueous deposits, making it an ideal site for preserving organic biosignatures.

Unlike current Mars orbiters and rovers, the mission’s key advantage lies in its subsurface exploration capability: the rover can drill up to 2 meters below the Martian surface to collect pristine rock and soil samples, shielded from the harsh surface radiation over time. This capability significantly enhances the probability of detecting life-related molecules and biological structures, directly addressing one of the most fundamental questions in planetary science: Did life ever exist on Mars?

II. The ROSA Project: NASA’s Four Core Contributions

As the U.S. implementation vehicle for this international collaboration, the ROSA Project will deliver tailored hardware and services to ESA, covering four critical mission phases: launch, landing, thermal control, and scientific payloads:

  1. Launch Services: Overseeing the entire launch process, NASA has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to carry out the mission.

  2. Landing Propulsion System: Providing braking engines for the rover’s landing platform to ensure precise control during the entry-descent-landing (EDL) phase.

  3. Radioisotope Heater Units (RHUs): Delivering stable thermal energy to the rover’s internal electronics and scientific instruments, enabling them to operate in Mars’ extreme low-temperature environment.

  4. Core Scientific Payload Components: Supplying specialized electronics and a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer for the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA), which will conduct high-precision identification and qualitative analysis of life’s building blocks in samples collected at the landing site.

III. Project Progress: Mature Collaboration Mechanisms and Successful Key Reviews

NASA and ESA’s deep collaboration on this mission is not ad hoc but built on rigorous agreements and review processes:

  • In early 2024, the two agencies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), formally defining the scope of NASA’s expanded support for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover.

  • Later that year, the ROSA Project passed the KDP-A/B review, initiating Phase B development, and successfully met all success criteria of its Preliminary Design Review (PDR)—laying a solid engineering foundation for the transition to the implementation phase.

IV. Launch Arrangements: Late 2028 Window from Kennedy Space Center

The mission’s launch plan has been clearly defined:

  • Launch Vehicle: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy

  • Launch Site: Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida

  • Launch Window: No earlier than late 2028

NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP) manages the launch service for this international effort. The launch service task order was competitively awarded under the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity NASA Launch Services II contract, using a firm-fixed-price model to balance the efficiency of commercial space with the reliability requirements of government missions.

V. Scientific and Engineering Value: A Paradigm of Transgenerational Breakthrough and International Collaboration

The implementation of the Rosalind Franklin Mission holds dual significance in both scientific breakthrough and engineering demonstration:

  • Scientific Significance: It fills the gap in subsurface biosignature detection on Mars, directly acquiring evidence of habitability at Oxia Planum and providing irreplaceable in-situ data for Mars evolution and extraterrestrial life research.

  • Engineering Significance: It validates the collaborative model between U.S. and European space agencies for deep space exploration, optimizes key technologies such as heavy-lift launch, deep-space EDL, and in-situ organic analysis, and accumulates systematic experience for future Mars sample return and crewed Mars missions.

Conclusion

The official launch of the ROSA Project propels the Rosalind Franklin Mars Mission beyond paper planning and into the fast track of hardware development, integration testing, and launch preparation. As the first dedicated mission to search for life beneath Mars’ surface, it represents not only a frontier exploration in planetary science but also a vivid practice of international space forces joining hands to solve the ultimate mysteries of the universe. When the 2028 Mars launch window opens, this rover—carrying the mission of life exploration—may bring us key answers that reshape our understanding of Mars.