Dec 6, 2005, 17:20 GMT
Berlin - European nations agreed Tuesday in Berlin on a space-exploration budget that will include an unmanned mission to the surface of Mars in 2011, Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
The ESA, which is funded by 17 European nations, has been keen to recover its standing after a British-built Mars lander, the Beagle 2, crashed on Mars in December 2003 and was never heard from again.
A new Mars mission, aimed at detecting signs of past or present life on Mars, was one of several rival projects competing for funds.
Code-named ExoMars because its focus is 'exobiology' (life beyond Earth), the mission will put a 'descent module' on the planet's surface complete with a rover and drill to dig below the surface.
It will also test robotic technologies for a later 'Mars Sample Return' mission, which would fly Mars rock back to Earth. The launch of the ExoMars mission from Kourou in South America has been targeted for 2011.
ExoMars will be part of a broader ESA scheme code-named Aurora to discover more about the Solar System.
Dordain spoke at the end of a two-day meeting of the ESA council of ministers with Canada also participating.
The ministers also agreed to boost ESA's 400-million-euro budget for pure science by 2.5 per cent annually over the next five years.
An unchanged contribution of 650 million euros to run the International Space Station (ISS), currently orbiting the Earth, was agreed.
Another major budget line to be adopted was for an Earth-orbit satellite project code-named Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) which is to be implemented 2006-2013.
The first instruments to go into orbit will be for land monitoring, ocean monitoring and emergency management.
ESA asked only for commitments on a two-year, 450-million-euro first phase of this programme to begin building replacements for the aging Envisat and ERS-2 radar satellites.
Europe ultimately hopes to have better pollution-detecting instruments orbiting the Earth than those of the United States.
While the technology has less public appeal that exploring Mars, space experts say it is a key to European leadership in research.
Dordain said ministers approved 95 per cent of the 8.8 billion euros in spending for the three-year period proposed by ESA.
Officials said that a project for manned space-transport vehicle, Clipper, which ESA wanted to develop jointly with Russia, had little chance left of being approved.
The next ESA ministerial council meeting is in 2008 in the Netherlands.
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