Following the announcement by British communications network satellite company OneWeb to suspend all launch missions at Baikonur launch site, ESA's Mars exploration mission ExoMars is also hanging!
The Mars exploration mission ExoMars is divided into two parts, the first part is to launch Mars into the orbit of Mars, in preparation for the subsequent Mars probe landing, which has been completed.
The second part is to send the Mars rover to the surface of Mars, which was originally planned to use the Soyuz rocket to transport the probe to Mars in September 2022.
But for a variety of reasons, the Mars exploration mission ExoMars is likely to face a lack of rockets, and the Soyuz rocket may be reluctant to continue cooperating.
What should be known is that the launch of the Mars rover pays great attention to the "timing" problem, because the orbit of Mars from the Earth is not a regular circle, and the distance between the earth and fire is only more than 55 million kilometers at the nearest time, and the farthest can reach more than 400 million kilometers.
Obviously, the closer the road, the less fuel is needed, the more money is saved, so the launch of the Mars rover, there is a "launch window", note that the launch window is not the closest time between the Earth and Mars, but when the position of Mars relative to the Sun, 44 degrees ahead of the Earth.
The launch window appears every 26 months, so whenever you go to the Mars launch window, you will always see a concentrated launch of Mars rovers.
Now that September is just a few months away, if ESA can't find a suitable rocket, I am afraid that the ExoMars mission will be postponed again, and it should be noted that this is not the first time it has been postponed, and it has been postponed many times before for various reasons.
One might ask why ESA must use foreign rockets, they don't have their own rockets?
In fact, ESA also has its own rocket, Ariane-5 is a high-thrust rocket, but this rocket not only has to add money, but also can not fully meet the need to directly send ExoMars into the Mars transfer orbit.
Unlike the conundrum facing ESA, what the United States lacks is not rockets, but rocket engines. In fact, there are many rocket engines in the United States, but the main rocket of the United States, the Cosmos 5, does not use domestic engines in the United States, but RD-180 engines produced abroad.
This engine has very good performance, a very high launch success rate, very mature technology, and a very low price point. The American Cosmos 5 rocket has used RD-180 engines many times and has achieved great success.
But it is precisely because of this that the Cosmos 5 rocket relies too much on the RD-180 engine, and the Cosmos 5 is a major carrier rocket in the United States, from August 2002 to February 2020, it has been launched 82 times, and has repeatedly carried out military, communication and even Mars rover launch missions.
That is to say, without the RD-180 engine, the American Cosmos 5 rocket was stuck in the neck. In fact, the United States also has alternatives, such as: BE-4 liquid oxygen / methane engine, AR1 rocket engine, is the United States developed RD-180 rocket engine alternative, but to apply it to the Cosmos 5, it will take a while.
Although the "Delta-4" carrier rocket can replace the Cosmos 5 rocket, the launch cost will increase in a straight line, and the budget increase will inevitably compress other launch missions, and even cancel the launch tasks of other satellites.
Why not use Chinese rockets?
In fact, China is also a space power, whether it is manned spaceflight, or Mars probes, or lunar exploration projects, the mainland has a suitable rocket for launch, and has been successful many times.
Since our rockets are so easy to use, why don't European and American countries use our rockets to launch satellites or probes?
In fact, it is because the United States has been blocking the continental space technology, and the early mainland rockets have also participated in satellite launch missions in Europe and the United States, such as the Iridium program.
However, in 1998, the United States fabricated the infamous Cox Report out of thin air, using fabricated evidence to slander the mainland for stealing classified information about nuclear warheads. It also treats normal international exchanges as stealing U.S. technical intelligence.
Although the Cox Report does not have any testable evidence, the United States prohibits continental rockets from participating in the launch of American satellites, even if other countries' satellites have a Us american screw, they are not allowed to be launched by mainland rockets. The United States is a space power, and many countries will use American components, which is equivalent to locking the international commercial market for mainland rockets.
In 2011, the United States passed the Wolf Clause:
Prohibit any joint scientific research activities between china and the United States that are related to OR coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as well as prohibit all NASA facilities from hosting "official Chinese visitors" on counter-espionage grounds.
This condition has seriously hindered the normal exchanges between China and the United States in the field of space, and even American scientists have accused the United States, and former NASA director Charles Bolden said: "Wolf Clause" restricts NASA from communicating with its peers, which is no benefit.
However, the mainland is not locked down, and since the rockets on the continent cannot launch satellites from other countries, we develop our own satellites.
It should be known that rockets are actually tools to launch satellites into space, and the real high-tech technology is concentrated on satellites. It is not easy to develop its own satellites, but the mainland does not want to be controlled by people from the beginning, so from the beginning it has taken the road of self-research, such as: the high-end aerospace-level high-speed processing chip used by the continental space station is independently developed by the mainland, which completely breaks the blockade of the United States.
Because the mainland has made a series of achievements in the field of spaceflight, some countries have begun to turn their heads and hope to cooperate with the mainland. Especially in the continental space station project, many European astronauts want to settle in, so they have learned Chinese in advance, after all, the operation manual on the continental space station is Chinese interface.
It is precisely because of the unremitting efforts of the mainland astronauts that the mainland has not only not been blockaded and lagged behind, but has become one of the world's most popular. Moreover, because we have prepared the neck from the beginning, it is difficult to get our neck stuck in foreign countries today by cutting off supply. However, foreign spaceflight needs to rely on close cooperation between countries, and once something goes wrong, it is easy to get stuck in the neck.