The U.S. is the only country so far to successfully land and operate a spacecraft on Mars. Curiosity rover has been roaming the red surface since 2012 and now other nations are racing amongst themselves to be the next one to explore the red planet.
China's space agency says their plan is to land on the Red Planet in 2021 after an expected launch in June 2020.
Francois Spoto is the ExoMars Programme Team Leader for the European Space Agency. He says time is of the essence:
"All the Russian and European tea ms are now focused at completing the verification programme of the spacecraft in time for qualification and acceptance review that is scheduled in April. If we would be successful with that review, we would be authorised to ship the spacecraft to Baikonur for a launch within a window that opens on the 26th July and closes on 11th August. Missing that window would mean that we would have to adjourn the launch by more than two years' time and the next launch opportunity would only reappear on August 2022. So, you can imagine that we are all very mobilised to resolve the last risks which we are facing - the parachute is one, the completion of the system test programme is another one, in order to get ready to catch this opportunity."
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