The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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A 1:1 scale replica of ESA’s ExoMars 2020 rover in the ‘Mars Yard’ of its ESTEC technical centre, inspected by members of the public during Sunday’s ESA Open Day in the Netherlands.
More than 7 500 visitors attended the ESA Open Day on 7 October, coming from all across Europe and beyond, as far away as Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.
ESA’s ExoMars rover, together with a Russian stationary surface science platform, is scheduled for launch in July 2020, arriving on Mars in March 2021. It will investigate how Mars has evolved and whether there may be conditions for life there.
It will travel across the martian surface and drill down to determine if evidence of life is buried underground, protected from the Sun’s radiation that bombards the surface of the 'Red Planet'. The rover will collect samples and analyse them with next-generation instruments – a fully fledged automated laboratory on Mars.
The competition to name the ExoMars rover closes at 23:59 BST (00:59 CEST) on Wednesday, 10 October.
Another testbed rover can be seen to the right of the ExoMars rover, in the 8 x 8 m terrain Mars Yard filled with different sizes of sand, gravel and rock, part of ESA’s Planetary Robotics Laboratory.
See more pictures from the ESA Open Day here.