Talk:Aurora programme

Out of date

The current article on the Aurora Programme of ESA is very much out of date. The ambitions of ESA have simply not been matched by contributions from member states. The article has not kept pace with this development, which makes is very much out of date. This is not very surprising given that a lack of progress to implement previous plans is seldom communicated by organisations. I tried to rectify this situation through my editing (lots of deletions and some additions) on 2009 July 8, but these changes were undone on 2009 July 27. I maintain that a drastic change is required to the article. Unless there are alternative suggestions I propose my edits of July 8 are reinstated, perhaps with the following additional paragraph summarising recent developments:

At a meeting in Plymouth (UK) on 2009 June 29-30 ESA and NASA created a Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (MEJI) with the aim of planning collaborative Mars missions for 2016, 2018 and 2020, and leading to the return of samples from Mars in the 2020s. The previous main effort of the Aurora Programme, the ExoMars mission, is not explicitly part of the MEJI collaboration and unlikely to be implemented as originally foreseen, but major parts of its science instruments are likely to be embedded in the MEJI collaboration. However, the Italian Space Agency (ASI), a major financer of the Aurora programme, has voiced scepticism regarding the proposed MEJI collaboration, in particular its lack of independent European demonstration of key capabilities for future planetary exploration. /216Kleopatra (talk) 13:44, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Help needed on current plans for Mars sample return missions

The current situation of future plans for Mars sample return missions (such as Mars sample return mission, Mars Exploration Joint Initiative, Aurora programme, Mars-Grunt and ExoMars) needs to be updated, especially what current plans on contributions and time-tables are from NASA, ESA and Roskomos. If anybody can contribute with references, it would be most welcome. Tony Mach (talk) 09:15, 7 August 2012 (UTC)