Latest news with #Esa
Times
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
‘People are dying, we are not safe': Britons in Kashmir beg to leave
British families stranded in Kashmir have begged to be evacuated from a 'holiday turned nightmare' as Pakistan and India exchange heavy gunfire. Khola Riaz, who lives in Luton, travelled last month to Kotli, a mountainous town in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, with her four-year-old son, Esa, to visit her unwell father. But within a week, her parents' hometown had become the centre of a military standoff between the two nuclear-armed states. Several British families in Kotli, which straddles the Line of Control, the de facto border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, have said they were forced into a lockdown as at least five civilians were killed in an intense night of artillery exchanges. • India-Pakistan live: nations strike airbases and move closer to war 'The bombing
The Guardian
28-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Europe must boost space investment to secure autonomy from US, says ESA boss
Donald Trump's return to the White House has prompted a shift away from ties with America by European political leaders and a rapid increase in defence spending as the continent's security reaches a 'turning point'. The ripples from Europe's newfound desire for self-reliance could go even further: as far as space. Europe's drive for more autonomy means it must also increase its invesment in space technology, according to Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency (Esa), the intergovernmental body tasked with overseeing the space exploration ambitions of European countries including much of the EU and the UK. 'There are many domains that are seen in space as the ones where Europe will want to increase its autonomy, and it is crystal clear in a more volatile geopolitical situation the need for more autonomy is there,' Aschbacher said in an interview with the Guardian in London. 'The situation is changing drastically.' Humans are turning their eyes to the skies more than ever. The world is in the middle of a second space race, with governments – and also private companies – taking advantage of huge advances in satellites, sensors and, crucially, rockets. Analysts talk of a $1tn industry, a scale that would match today's airline sector, with Earth observation, communications, and even tourism expected to boom. The Trump-provoked increase in military spending could add further momentum, as armed forces vie for better spying gear. However, Aschbacher's role as Esa boss is also to argue for continued investment in science to benefit humanity, including projects such as measuring wind speed using lasers, climate monitoring satellites, and the Euclid telescope, designed to explore the mysteries of dark matter. For European space science, close cooperation with the US has been vital for decades. The Esa works with American counterparts on projects ranging from putting astronauts on the International Space Station to the James Webb telescope, which is peering at radiation from galaxies billions of years ago, and the Artemis programme to return people to the moon. Aschbacher, an Austrian, controls a budget worth €7.7bn (£6.4bn) this year, a large amount, but dwarfed by the $25.4bn (£19.6bn) budget of the US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). Trump's return has raised questions over whether that cooperation will continue, as the US imposes steep cuts on Nasa. Elon Musk adds another complication. His SpaceX has already been perhaps the biggest contributor to the revolutionary decline in launch costs thanks to its reusable Falcon 9 rockets. Yet the billionaire's highly controversial cost-cutting mandate under Trump means he is likely to wield significant influence over US space policy, despite the obvious risk of conflicts of interest as Nasa's key contractor. Trump's pick for Nasa administrator, the billionaire Jared Isaacman, paid SpaceX to take him to space. Musk has criticised Artemis, preferring instead his ambition to send people to Mars. European countries are also racing to wean themselves off SpaceX's Starlink, a network of internet satellites in low-Earth orbit (Leo). Starlink has built by far the largest Leo constellation, giving reliable internet access in remote locations and becoming an indispensable part of Ukraine's military communications since Russia's 2022 invasion. Asked about Musk's influence, Aschbacher declined to comment on 'the internal politics of the United States and who should influence these decisions'. The Esa is continuing with its part of the planned works, building the Orion capsule to transport astronauts, Aschbacher said, adding that he is 'confident that the US will keep cooperating with Europe in the Artemis programme', including in creating a 'lunar gateway' orbiting the moon. 'If changes happen and if our US partners and friends are changing their plans, of course we will be ready for plan B,' Aschbacher said. 'And certainly we will reinforce our autonomy and our capacity as a consequence of it. But today is not the time to talk about plan B, because plan A is in place.' However, the Esa is also considering tie-ups with other countries who could be part of 'plan B'. Aschbacher highlighted Australia, the United Arab Emirates and India as promising partners for Europe. SpaceX last month confirmed its dominant position when its Dragon capsule brought back four people, two of whom were stranded on the International Space Station after technical issues on rival Boeing's Starliner craft. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Europe was left reliant on SpaceX to launch part of its Galileo satnav system after the retirement of the Ariane 5 rocket, and the grounding of Vega C, both operated by Arianespace, co-owned by aerospace manufacturers Airbus and Safran. That amounted to a 'launching crisis' that was only ended by the first flight of Arianespace's Ariane 6 rocket last year. The Esa is now seeking to spur more launch competitors for the next generation, with a focus on reusable rockets to emulate SpaceX's cost reductions. One Esa-led project, the Prometheus engine, should be able to launch in 'less than a handful' of years, Aschbacher said. Other European private-sector players, such as German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg, are also in the race. If all goes to plan, they could also take off from the UK, ending the reliance on the Esa's spaceport in French Guiana in South America. Aschbacher said the development of UK spaceports, most notably one in Shetland, would be another welcome development. The Esa, funded by 23 member states, but is not an EU organisation, meaning Brexit has not stymied the UK's involvement, although there was a hiatus in its part in the Copernicus climate satellite programme. The Esa's role is to explore space peacefully, but the obvious military applications may make it easier for the agency to win increased funding from its member governments this November as they rush to rearm and fill the gap left by the US. Yet, Aschbacher is a scientist. He studied natural sciences at the University of Innsbruck and joined the Esa in 1990, rising through the ranks to lead its Earth Observation Division. Although he acknowledged that space technologies will 'play a fundamental role in order to enable many of these security requirements' for European governments, he also called for continued investment in science. He likened space investments to those into the fundamental research that allowed scientists to develop vaccines against Covid with astonishing speed during the pandemic. 'Investments in space in Europe have to increase in order to make sure that Europe can sustain its standard of quality of life and standard of living for its people,' he said. 'Science is such a strength of Europe. It's actually the reason why economic progress and economic development can happen or happen faster.'
The Guardian
05-04-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Space probe to map carbon content of world's remotest tropical forests
Scientists are about to take part in a revolutionary mission aimed at creating detailed 3D maps of the world's remotest, densest and darkest tropical forests – from outer space. The feat will be achieved using a special radar scanner that has been fitted to a probe, named Biomass, that will be fired into the Earth's orbit later this month. For the next five years, the 1.25-tonne spacecraft will sweep over the tropical rainforests of Africa, Asia and South America and peer through their dense 40m-high canopies to study the vegetation that lies beneath. The data collected by Biomass will then be used to create unique 3D maps of forests normally hidden from human sight. Less than 2% of sunlight reaches the forest floor in these regions, yet Biomass will study them in unsurpassed detail from a height of more than 600km. More importantly, the mission will allow scientists to calculate how much carbon is stored in the forests and measure how levels are changing as humans continue to cut down trees in the tropics and increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. In addition, Biomass – which has been built by a consortium led by Airbus UK and funded by the European Space Agency (Esa) – will map the sub-surface geology and topography of forest floors while it will also provide data about the rate at which biodiversity is being lost as forests are cleared for mining and agriculture. 'We need to know the health of our tropical forests,' Simonetta Cheli, director of Earth Observation Programmes for Esa, told the Observer last week: 'We need to know the quality and diversity of its vegetation and the amount of carbon stored there. To get that information we are going to create 3D images of them – from the top of the forest canopy to the roots of its trees.' Tropical forests play a crucial role in protecting the planet from some of the worst effects of global warming because they absorb so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: estimates suggest they take up about eight billion tonnes and are often described as the Earth's green lungs. But deforestation and environmental degradation are now reversing this effect. Carbon, once stored in vast amounts, is being put back into the atmosphere, adding to growing levels of greenhouse gases. Hotspots include northern regions of South America, sub-Saharan Africa, south-east Asia and the Pacific where increased production of beef, soya, coffee, cacao, palm oil and timber are triggering widespread deforestation. Quantifying the problem is essential for forecasting what is going to happen to Earth's climate in coming years, said Bjorn Rommen, mission scientist for the Biomass project: 'We don't properly understand what changes are now taking place, partly because we do not have accurate estimations of carbon levels in these forests. Biomass is going to help us to get a better grip on those numbers.' Biomass is scheduled to be launched from Esa's spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana on 29 April on a VegaC rocket and will carry a radar known as a P-band synthetic aperture radar. Its use of long wavelength signals will allow it to peer down through canopies in order to assess how much carbon is stored on the floor and branches of the trees in the world's tropical forests and to assess how levels are changing. This type of radar has never been flown in space before and has required Biomass to be fitted with a giant 12m antenna which will be deployed as the spacecraft begins its sweep over the Earth. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion 'What the mission will do, effectively, is weigh the forests it studies,' said the leader of the Biomass science team, Prof Shaun Quegan, of Sheffield University. 'We know half that weight must be made up of carbon. So we are going to be able to weigh the carbon content of the world's tropical forests from space and, crucially, work out how much these are changing over time. We will then know the balance of carbon that is flowing to and from the atmosphere. That is enormously important.' This point was backed by Cheli. 'We need to be able to predict what the Earth will look like as temperatures rise. So we are going to integrate its data with AI and with other digital elements of machine learning and that will tell us what is likely to happen in future. It will tell us what we are up against.'
New York Times
03-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
How this 2025 NFL Draft hopeful is looking to turn his calling into reality
On the first day of the rest of his life, Esa Pole was being pulled in two directions. It was spring of 2021, and he was a 6-foot-6, 290-pound junior college freshman who had never been in a three-point stance with pads on, about to compete on a football field with guys who'd been doing this since they were children. He couldn't help but feel awkward. Advertisement But when he saw how the California sun looked as it beamed through a pair of glass doors onto the field, in that moment, he felt something else. Hope. 'Football,' Pole says now, 'saved my life.' No player in the 2025 NFL Draft class has a story like that of Esa Pole, the quick and powerful left tackle from Washington State who's made it to pro football's doorstep despite never having played a snap in high school. At his pro day, the now 6-6, 323-pound Pole (who did not allow a sack in 850 snaps last season) put up 23 reps of 225 pounds on the bench press. Five years ago, the first time he ever touched a weight, he could barely push 185 — once. A year and a half before that first practice in spring of 2021 at Chabot (Calif.) College, Pole was directionless. His plan to pursue basketball after graduating in 2019 from Mt. Eden High in 2019 had fallen through, as no one needed a 6-6 center. Once a bright student with limitless potential, Esa found himself out of school and in a hole, all before his 20th birthday. He needed a miracle worker. That's where football — and Pole's older brother, Toni — enters the story. Kalafitoni 'Toni' Pole is 10 years older than Esa, and he's been around football all his life. A standout defensive tackle and team captain at Washington State, he is a former Apple Cup hero who lived to battle in the trenches and was good enough for a stint in the NFL. If anyone knew how hard it'd be for a kid with zero prep football experience to make it on a college team, at any level, it was him. Most would've reasoned with Esa — told him it was too late, that it was nearly impossible. Toni Pole isn't most people. He's his brother's keeper. And he never blinked. 'We've had our moments through this. Both sobbing on the phone together, you know. A lot of sacrifice,' Toni says. 'But this changed my life, too. I did it for Esa. But it changed my life.' Advertisement Toni and Esa grew up near the Bay Area, in the town of Hayward. Two members of a large, happy extended family, Toni and Esa have the same biological parents but grew up under different roofs. It's not uncommon in Polynesian culture for older siblings, cousins or grandparents to 'adopt' children from other members of the family. Toni grew up with his birth parents; Esa with his biological cousin Kalo Muller, whom he refers to as his 'mom.' Different houses, different rules. Toni was allowed to play football, for example. Esa wasn't. Muller was leery of it — and of sports, in general. She saw them as distractions. She had safety concerns, too, of course, but she worried more about how easily a talented kid might get knocked off track. 'He was such a nice, gentle kid,' says Muller of Esa, who grew up wanting to be an engineer. 'He got very good grades and, honestly, that's why I didn't want him around football in the beginning. So he would ask me, you know, because Toni played football. But my answer was always, 'No.' 'I was worried, I just didn't want him to lose focus with school.' GO DEEPER 2025 NFL Draft Big Board: Who are the top 100 prospects in this year's class? She eventually compromised and allowed him to play basketball midway through high school. Esa was a natural. A big man with soft hands and quick feet, he was a load in the post but also a dangerous passer with touch on his shot. It was almost enough to make everyone forget that, when it comes to sports, people like Esa are born to be football players. Pole likes to explain how he's fortunate enough to have two moms he loves with all his heart: his birth mother, Lola, and Muller, the person who raised him. He absolutely wanted to play football — to be exactly like Toni, whom he idolized. When Muller didn't want him to play, though, he respected her wish, even if it made him feel out of place. A player Esa's size with natural movement skills could blink and draw a football scholarship in California. But a basketball scholarship? The best opportunity he could find was at Cal State-East Bay, down the road from his family in Hayward. Advertisement His main recruiter left for another job before Pole's freshman year, however, and that chance fell apart — his spot on the basketball team was gone. Pole was devastated. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit a few months later, he was basically numb. He felt like he didn't fit anywhere and retreated inward. He got a job at a shoe store and picked up construction projects. Muller could feel her son was struggling. Toni felt it, too. So, one day, when a depressed Esa turned to him on the couch and asked if it was too late for him to give football a try, Toni did what older brothers do — he told him that if he wants something badly enough, then it's never too late. In football, Esa found the sense of community for which he'd always been looking. He found his thing, his passion. Football absolutely helped save him, sure, but in truth, Toni was the real savior. He's the one who, at the drop of a hat, dedicated his life to helping his brother find his own path. 'He's his big brother, you know. And they love each other, very much,' says Muller, who eventually came around on football after seeing how much purpose and direction it gave Esa. 'He couldn't have had a better mentor.' Being an older brother is complicated. It's a badge no one chooses, and it doesn't come with a handbook. But Toni lived the role by one rule: When you are called upon, you have to be there — no matter how hard it is. There was no concrete plan for Esa's football journey, no promise any of this would work. But Toni showed up anyway, because he was needed. And in doing so, big brother and little brother began a journey of self-discovery that led each to their own passion. GO DEEPER 2024 NFL Mock Draft: After Super Bowl LVIII, how could the first three rounds look? Training started at ground zero. Toni started working with Esa on basic football movements, on a patch of grass at a nearby duck pond. The early goal was to take the basketball movements Esa knew and morph them into something translatable for football. Part of why Esa took to pass protection so quickly is because of how similar a kick slide is to a defensive shuffle in basketball. Advertisement They drilled endlessly — one step at a time. Then they really started to sweat. At the time, Toni, whose wife had recently given birth to their first child, was working the overnight shift at a nearby gym. His schedule was full, but he had an idea. 'We'd train all afternoon, until like 6:30 (p.m.) before getting home around 7,' Toni says. 'I'd go take a nap until about 10:30. And I told him, you know, to make sure he relaxes a little bit — because when I get up, he's coming to work with me.' If Toni worked Esa on lower-body movements during the afternoon, he'd wring him out in the weight room with lower-body lifts until 1 a.m. Whatever muscle group the afternoon session focused on, the overnight work targeted the same. The brothers did this every day. Esa eventually found an opportunity at Chabot College, a tiny juco program that plays in the California Community College Athletic Association. It's about as far from Division I football as it gets. When even that level of competition began to overwhelm Esa, Toni recentered his focus with a basic lesson in how football players — including those in the tiny CCCAA – were wired. GO DEEPER Jordan Palmer wants to change how we evaluate QBs. Kyle McCord is his 2025 NFL Draft test case. 'Every single kid out there had at least four years of playing before coming to juco. (They're) pretty much all-stars from wherever they played in high school,' Toni said. 'And, so, here you are. These guys are going to look at you like, 'You think you can just show up and play the sport that I love?' 'We had to expedite the process. Every detail.' Toni didn't just teach Esa how the game works and how to change his body to survive in it, he also taught him how to strain like a football player. He taught the difference between being 'hurt' and injured — which, in football, is everything. Slowly, pain produced progress. Esa had never touched a weight before starting those overnight lifts with Toni, but he picked up the work quickly. An analytical thinker, Esa began to appreciate the process of challenging, changing and growing his frame. It got easier. Advertisement Never easy, mind you, but more manageable. When he arrived at Chabot in spring of 2021 and saw that sunlight beaming through the glass, Esa was a different person. He was still unsure of a lot, but he'd completely committed to a dream that once felt impossible. He also had worked harder in the last year than most of his new teammates had in their playing lives, no matter how long they'd been around the game. .@ShrineBowl WORK @esa_pole 📈😤 — Washington State Football (@WSUCougarFB) January 28, 2025 Esa initially worked with the defensive line, but the Chabot coaches convinced him to try offensive tackle. He took to it like one of the ducks in that pond where he'd started training. Every mistake turned into an on-the-fly lesson in how the game works. Slowly, but surely, he started to feel at home. So did Toni. After more than five years away from the game he loved, Toni joined the Chabot staff as defensive line coach — he helped encourage Esa to switch sides of the ball — and stayed until Esa received an offer to play at Washington State ahead of the 2023 season. Toni is now the D-line coach at Laney (Calif.) College. Through each other, the brothers found their paths. 'Everyone has a different deck of cards dealt to them,' Esa says. 'It's just a matter of what you do with them.' It's hard to assign an exact draft stock to a player like Esa, in part because it's impossible to compare him to his peers. He's the only offensive lineman in this class who'd graduated high school before buckling up a chin strap. His first season at Chabot was messy, but his work with Toni never stopped. When his teammates used downtime to get away from the game, Esa doubled down. The work ethic Toni ignited in him carried him early, and his natural athleticism took over from there — he finished his second year at Chabot as one of the top offensive tackles in juco football. GO DEEPER Feldman's 2025 NFL mock draft: How coaches view Ward, Sanders, Hunter, Carter and more His first year at Washington State was exactly like his first at Chabot. He looked like a potential star in September against Oregon State, only to give up nine pressures his next time out against UCLA. He was a mess against Arizona State, then turned in his best game of the year the following week against Stanford. Year 2 felt familiar, as his growth skyrocketed once more. Advertisement Pole gave up nine pressures in one game as a junior; he allowed just nine in his entire senior season. Per Pro Football Focus, Pole finished 2024 tied for the sixth-lowest pressure rate allowed among FBS offensive tackles — 2.2 percent, even with Missouri's Armand Membou, a projected top-10 pick this spring. 'My O-line coach, Jared Kaster (who's now at Wake Forest), kind of revolutionized the game for me,' Esa says. 'He really got it through to me, and it clicked, like, every play there's another man out there trying to take your man card. Are you going to let him take it? Or are you going to take his? 'Every other position on the field can get away with loafing. We don't loaf as offensive linemen. If we do, somebody could really get hurt.' Pole wrapped his college career auditioning for NFL scouts at the Shrine Bowl in Dallas, wearing a smile big enough to see all the way back in California. As for now, the training continues. No one's quite sure where Pole will land on the final draft board, or if he'll have to take a chance as an undrafted free agent. He'll attack either scenario with the same attitude and passion he's shown these last four years — with hope, confidence and gratitude. 'It's interesting, people will look at him play and tell me, 'Man, he's supposed to be here — he makes it look easy,'' says Toni of Esa. 'Easy? They don't know what it took to get here, how he buried himself in work. 'We didn't have a lot growing up, you know. And to see how far he's come, it's just beautiful.'
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Branson rocket failure made Britain look bad – but we will change that, says Science Secretary
When Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit rocket failed on its maiden launch from Cornwall in 2023, it brought Britain's space aspirations crashing down to Earth. Now, Peter Kyle, the Science Secretary, is determined that the UK will shake off its image of a 'plucky' yet unsuccessful nation to become a dominant force in the space industry. He personally intervened to ensure that SaxaVord Spaceport on Shetland will get government support to embark on the first vertical satellite launches this year. And he has not ruled out human space flight from this side of the Atlantic. 'I'm certainly not going to put a cap on anything Britain can achieve, because I think we have the ability to do things that most people don't believe is possible right now,' he told The Telegraph. 'And I think it's about time Britain just lifted its head up to the horizon and thought a bit more ambitiously about what we can achieve as a country.' Speaking of the unsuccessful Cornwall launch, he added: 'I watched it live, and the worst thing about that is you think, 'That's what we do, we're plucky, we try, but we never get there'. 'SaxaVord feels different, because the Arctic orbit is unique, it's not something you can get from mainland America, so if we do this we can have a realistic opportunity for us to find our feet in a fast-growing market. 'If we can have those successful launches from SaxaVord, I think Britain would sit back and watch the TV screens like I did as a child at school when we all gathered around the television to watch the Space Shuttle launch. It would be just a lovely moment for our country. ' Mr Kyle was speaking during a visit to the Airbus factory in Stevenage, which has just won a European Space Agency (Esa) contract to build the lander for the ExoMars mission, that will land the first European rover on Mars to look for life. The original lander was designed by Russia, but Esa severed ties with Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, at the start of the Ukraine war, leaving it without a way to get its rover to the Martian surface. The Hertfordshire factory also built the rover – dubbed Rosalind Franklin after the British chemist who pioneered the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA – so already had an intimate knowledge of the cargo and an extra interest in getting it down in one piece. The £150 million contract is a major boost to Britain's space interests. Mr Kyle added: 'It is important for Britain and our prestige as a country that we have something that is going to be so globally significant coming out of Stevenage and then right the way to Mars. 'We're going to get so much information that it's going to seep its way through the scientific community. 'It might end up in medical technology, it might end up in an understanding of humanity and life itself. And it might answer some of the big existential questions that we often strive for. 'I'm sure they're not going to find a skeleton there. But even if its microbial life, that proves there is life elsewhere in the universe and I'm just excited for whatever comes back.' As well as being built in Britain, the rover is also carrying a suite of instruments from British universities including University College London (UCL), Aberystwyth, Birkbeck College and Leicester. The rover's high mast is fitted with a special camera that scans the Martian surface looking for minerals that may prove there was once liquid water that could have hosted extraterrestrial organisms. Once a watery location is discovered, the rover will trundle to the spot at a speed of around 47 inches an hour, before drilling six-and-a-half feet down into the ground to take samples. The Martian rocks are then fed through an aperture on the rover into a mobile laboratory – the first ever on a rover – where they are crushed up and examined for organic matter. Confirmation of life could come within just weeks or months of the rover landing. But getting the rover to the surface is not easy. Fewer than half the soft landings on Mars have been successful, and Britain suffered a notable failure when Beagle 2 vanished after touching down in 2003. Caroline Rodier, who is leading the lander programme at Airbus, said: 'It's quite a challenge. The outer shell will provide quite a lot of deceleration, then there are two parachutes, one sonic and one subsonic, and after that a big thruster engine for the final few minutes. 'Once the lander arrives, then the rover has a few days to effectively unfold, sort of like Wall-E in the cartoon and start deployment. 'There is clearly strong hope that we're going to discover new things. It would be mind-blowing to find life on another planet and we could quite quickly know much more about Mars. It is exciting.' Mr Kyle said he had sometimes found it a struggle to make the case for space, particularly after a National Audit Office report warned last year that Britain was not getting value for money on its investment in Esa – a situation that has since improved. The SaxaVord spaceport has continually complained that help from the previous government was lukewarm and they had to, largely, go it alone. Mr Kyle said he also had the option to give up on the spaceport. 'Those who put to me arguments that the money could be used better elsewhere, the thought that I kept coming back to is the knowledge that if I turn this off, it's not coming back again,' he said. 'So did I want to be the person that just turned hope off? I didn't, so I also met all of the characters involved, and their passion is enthusiastic, it is contagious and but it is underpinned by scientific rigour. 'It feels so British, with a sort of 'can do' Heath Robinson attitude but built on proper foundations, so it has the best of all, all of our scientific characteristics.' SaxaVord has attempted one static-fire test of a RFA (Rocket Factory Augsburg) rocket last year but it ended in a dramatic explosion. But the company says it is back on track for launches this year and is racing against Norway to be the first vertical launch from Europe. The ExoMars mission is due to launch in 2028 with the support of Nasa and land on Mars in 2030. Kata Escott, managing director of Airbus Defence and Space UK, said: 'Getting the Rosalind Franklin rover on to the surface of Mars is a huge international challenge and the culmination of more than 20 years' work. 'Rosalind Franklin will be the first Martian rover able to analyse samples from two metres below the surface in its search for past or present life.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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