The European Space Exploration Programme “Aurora”: status and outlook
- Paper number
IAC-07-A3.2.05
- Author
Mr. Piero Messina, European Space Agency/Headquarters, France
- Coauthor
Mr. Bruno Gardini, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Mr. Dietrich Vennemann, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Mr. Daniel Sacotte, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Year
2007
- Abstract
The Aurora Programme’s goal remains to prepare Europe for a robust and strategic participation in the global effort of exploring our Solar System, and especially the moon and Mars through automatic and eventually human missions. The Programme presents itself as a fine balance between development of specific missions in the medium term and definition of future missions and capabilities. The Core Programme, within which one priority has been set by Participating States on the preparatory work for a Mars Sample Return Mission, is the framework where future missions will be prepared through a series of technology development activities, system and architecture studies as well as the definition of a set of precursor missions. Awareness raising as well as roadmap definition are also part of the Core programme activities. The ExoMars mission is the first robotic mission being developed within Aurora. The large support that the ESA proposal has attracted among Member States will allow the detailed definition phase to continue and leave room to study a potential enhancement to the current baseline. The mission is slated for launch in 2013 and will deploy on the Mars surface a Rover with an exobiology payload and a static geo-physical payload. The paper will present the current status and future perspectives of the Programme and outline the approach for the consolidation of a European long-term strategy for space exploration. The paper will address in particular the status of planning and selection of the next exploration mission to be submitted for approval at the ESA Council at Ministerial level foreseen in 2008.
- Abstract document