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ExoMars 2020 will proceed as planned despite the October failure of the Schiaparelli test lander, but the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is dead:
Europe will push ahead with its plan to put a UK-assembled robotic rover on the surface of Mars in 2021.
Research ministers meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, have agreed to stump up the outstanding €436m euros needed to take the project through to completion.
The mission is late and is costing far more than originally envisaged, prompting fears that European Space Agency member states might abandon it. But the ministers have emphatically reaffirmed their commitment to it.
They have also said that European participation in the International Space Station (ISS) should run until at least 2024, bringing Esa[sic] into line with its partners on the orbiting laboratory - the US, Russia, Japan and Canada.
The AIM cancellation will affect NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART):
Asteroid researchers will be dismayed to hear of the demise of AIM. The mission intended to send a small spacecraft to a 170-meter lump of rock nicknamed Didymoon, because it orbits around a slightly larger asteroid called Didymos. Didymoon is interesting because a NASA mission called Double Asteroid Redirection Test is intending to smash into it at 6 kilometers per second to see what effect that has on its motion. AIM would have observed the condition of the asteroid before and after the collision. Wörner said he will be traveling to Washington, D.C., next week to discuss with NASA what the AIM cancellation means for the joint mission.
(Score: 2, Funny) by kanweg on Saturday December 03 2016, @05:22PM
"Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is dead:"
Ironic, as that would have been a slam dunk.
But then, they can already crash something, so now a challenge to keep something in one piece.
Bert