The bigger picture: Work on the EXOMARS rover is almost complete.

named the Rosalind Franklin, will be Europe’s first planetary rover. It’s now in its final stages of assembly at Airbus’s bioburden clean room in Stevenage, a town in the UK about 50 km north of London.

Its ‘eye’ – a high-resolution panoramic camera (PanCam) – has just been fitted and integrated. It’s a precision instrument capable of capturing 3D images to be used by the autonomous navigation system. The scientific team at the Rover Operation Control Centre will select a site for the rover using the imagery, and then Rosalind Franklin will determine its own safe path to travel there.

The rover houses nine instruments that will assist scientists in conducting a step-by-step exploration of Mars, including PanCam, ISEM (Infrared Spectrometer for EXOMARS – to assess mineralogical composition of surface targets), CLUPI (Close-Up Imager – a camera system for

acquiring HR colour close-ups of rocks and drill core samples), WISDOM (Water Ice and Subsurface Deposit Observation On Mars – a ground-penetrating radar for characterising the stratigraphy under the rover), Adron (an instrument for searching for subsurface water and hydrated minerals), Ma_MISS (Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies – located inside the drill, it will study Martian mineralogy and rock formation), MICROMEGA (visible- and infrared imaging spectrometer for mineralogy studies on samples), RLS (Raman Spectrometer – for establishing mineralogical composition and identifying organic pigments), and MOMA (Mars Organics Molecule Analyser – for targeting biomarkers to aid in answering questions about the potential origin, evolution and distribution of life on Mars).