The ExoMars mission has been suspended after the European Space Agency (ESA) said it would be impossible to continue working with the Russian space agency after the invasion of Ukraine.
The mission would have seen Europe sending its first rover to Mars to probe whether the planet ever hosted life.
ESA “acknowledged the present impossibility of carrying out the ongoing cooperation” with partner Roscosmos, Russia's state space corporation.
The ESA had previously said that the mission was "very unlikely" because of Russia's war against Ukraine.
The UK-built Rosalind Franklin rover was due to launch in September this year from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and the space agency is now exploring how to move forward with the mission.
While recognising the impact on scientific exploration of space, ESA is fully aligned with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its member states
In a statement, ESA said: “As an intergovernmental organisation mandated to develop and implement space programmes in full respect with European values, we deeply deplore the human casualties and tragic consequences of the aggression towards Ukraine.
“While recognising the impact on scientific exploration of space, ESA is fully aligned with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its member states.”
The ExoMars mission had already been pushed back from 2020, because of the coronavirus pandemic and the need for more tests on the spacecraft.
Because of their respective orbits around the Sun, Mars is only readily reachable from Earth every two years. The next launch window would be 2024.
The mission was to have blasted off on a Russian Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan in September, and had been scheduled to land on the red planet some nine months later.
Already on Mars are NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed in Feb. 2021, and China's first Mars rover, Zhurong, named after the Chinese god of fire.
ESA’s ruling council, which met in Paris on March 16 and 17, authorised its director general, Josef Aschbacher, to take appropriate steps to suspend the cooperation activities with the ExoMArs mission
Based on a first analysis of the impacts on all other activities affected by the war in Ukraine, Dr Aschbacher intends to convene an extraordinary session of council in the coming weeks to submit specific proposals for decision by member states.
