DENVER — NASA has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to launch a European Mars rover, support for which the agency is once again proposing to cancel.
NASA announced April 16 it approved its Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation (ROSA) project to begin implementation. ROSA provides support for the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin rover mission to Mars.
Under ROSA, NASA is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage along with radioisotope heater units, or RHUs, which use the decay of plutonium to generate heat to keep the rover warm. That support is in addition to electronics for the rover and a mass spectrometer instrument.
NASA made the additional contributions under a 2024 agreement after ESA canceled cooperation with Russia on the rover mission in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. At the time, the rover was to use a landing stage and RHUs provided by Russia along with a Proton launch vehicle.
The use of NASA-supplied RHUs requires the rover to launch on an American vehicle. NASA said that, through its NASA Launch Services Program, it selected Falcon Heavy to launch the rover in late 2028.
An agency spokesperson told SpaceNews April 17 that the launch contract is worth $175.7 million, which includes the launch service and other mission-related costs. That is similar to a 2021 award for the Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which launched in 2024 for $178 million, and less than the $255 million NASA awarded to SpaceX in 2022 for the Falcon Heavy launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled for as soon as this fall.
Even as NASA is proceeding with ROSA, the agency is seeking to cancel that cooperation. The agency’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA. The mission was not mentioned at all in the agency’s detailed congressional budget justification document released April 3.
That budget proposes to cancel more than 50 science missions in development or extended operations, according to an analysis by The Planetary Society. ROSA is one of 10 planetary science missions proposed for cancellation, or 29% of the agency’s current portfolio. ROSA was also targeted for cancellation in 2026 but had its funding restored by Congress.
Members of Congress of both parties oppose the proposed cuts. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) subcommittee, told reporters April 12 he would seek to reverse the cuts, seeking overall spending “pretty similar” to 2026 levels with a balance among science, exploration and other programs.
In an April 14 letter to Moran and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., ranking member of the CJS appropriations subcommittee, 22 senators requested $9 billion for NASA science in 2027. That would be a nearly 25% increase from the $7.25 billion science received in the final 2026 spending bill; the White House proposal would slash funding by nearly 50% from 2026 levels to $3.9 billion.
The letter was led by Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. All the signatories were Democrats except for Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Senate Democrats.
Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director general, did not mention threats to NASA support for Rosalind Franklin during an April 14 speech at the 41st Space Symposium. He discussed only the scientific aspects of the mission, which includes a rover to retrieve samples from below the surface and look for evidence of life.
“This is really something that is quite important,” he said of the mission.
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