'The rock pieces that Perseverance collects are from the immediate surface ,' Susanne Schwenzer, an astrobiologist at Open University in the U.K., who is also an interdisciplinary scientist on the ExoMars mission and a member of the science teams of NASA's Curiosity and the Mars Sample Return missions, told. The biggest strength, and scientific promise, of the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover is its 6.6-foot (2 meters) drill, which, according to some astrobiologists, may have a higher chance of finding traces of past or present Martian life on Mars than the agile Perseverance. Even if we're going by bicycle rather than by the newest car, it doesn't really matter, as long as we get there.' The promise of the drill 'But as long as the maintenance can be done, it doesn't actually bother me too much that we're not using the most cutting-edge technology. ' are going to get a bit old,' John Bridges, a professor of planetary science at Leicester University in the U.K., told.

And some of those questions, in fact, cannot be answered by the stellar Perseverance. Even though NASA's Perseverance has been smashing its sample collection targets, and plans for a mission that would bring those samples to Earth are already underway, there is a lot the aging ExoMars rover can contribute to our understanding of Mars, they say. For many European scientists, scrapping the mission should not be an option at all, and not just because of the investment. In the case of the latter option, the most optimistic estimates see the ExoMars rover leaving Earth in 2028.

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