MOSCOW. Sept 15 (Interfax) - A model of the Rosalind Franklin rover of the Russian-European mission ExoMars-2022 extracted a sample from a depth of 1.7 meters during tests, Roscosmos said, citing a statement of the European Space Agency (ESA).
"ESA's Rosalind Franklin twin rover on Earth has drilled down and extracted samples 1.7 meters into the ground - much deeper than any other martian rover has ever attempted," the statement said.
The deepest the red planet has been drilled to date is seven centimeters, the ESA said.
Drilling to a depth of two meters will allow the study of well-preserved organic material that formed four billion years ago, when conditions on the surface of Mars were more similar to those on Earth, it said.
To recreate the weaker martian gravity level (Mars' gravity is about one-third of Earth's) the twin rover hangs from the ceiling on a dedicated gravity compensation device. As a result, the twin "acquired the sample in the shape of a pellet of about 1 cm in diameter and 2 cm long," the statement said.
It was reported that the Russian Proton-M carrier rocket, complete with a Briz upper stage and ExoMars, will be launched from Baikonur at 5:10 p.m. Moscow time on September 22, 2022, with October 1, 2022, as a back-up date.
After separating from the interplanetary station the rover should land on Mars nine months later, at 6:32 p.m. on June 10, 2023.
The ESA and Roscosmos announced in March 2020 that ExoMars's launch would be postponed to 2022 from 2020 due to the need to conduct more tests of updated hardware and some issues associated with the coronavirus pandemic.
ExoMars is the ESA's and Roscosmos's joint program for the exploration of Mars, whose main goal is to search for evidence of the presence of living organisms on the planet in the past and present.
ExoMars consists of a European cruise stage and a Russian descent module, the latter comprising the Russian lander Kazachok and the European rover Rosalind Franklin.
The first ExoMars station was launched on March 14, 2016 from Baikonur on board a Proton launch vehicle. It successfully reached the planet's orbit on October 19, 2016, but the lander then crashed while descending on Meridiani Planum.