It’s official: Russia will no longer be part of Europe’s life-hunting Mars rover mission, which is scheduled to launch in the late 2020s.
The European Space Agency (ESA) had been developing that mission in cooperation with its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, as part of a broader program called ExoMars.
The original plan called for the rover, named Rosalind Franklin, to launch atop a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, a site in…