For Russia, the return of samples from Phobos would also mean “lessons learned” after the failure of the Phobos-Grunt mission in 2011. The new joint project is expected to employ much more reliable technology and, hopefully, much better management than that of its ill-fated predecessor.

In the past couple of years, ESA and Roskosmos have conducted joined studies of feasible scenarios for a Phobos sample return mission, which could be launched between 2024 and 2028. The first phase of this work was completed this month, in anticipation of a meeting of European ministers in December, who hold the purse strings of the future ESA budget.

With the mission scenario and budget estimate in hand, ESA hoped to lobby for the first significant investment into the Phobos project. However, with the ExoMars rover requiring urgent extra cash to cover for its two-year delay, the Phobos project had to be taken off the table this year.

“We would not propose this (mission) for development until we have ExoMars on sure footing,” Jorge Vago, the leading expert at ESA’s Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration, says, “We will keep working on it, but we will not go for a full implementation now.”

Bernardo Patti, Head of ISS Program and Exploration Department, which on January 1, 2016, took over responsibility at ESA for all human and post-ExoMars deep-space missions, confirmed that the next significant budget request for the Phobos mission will only be made at the agency’s ministerial conference in 2019. In the intervening three years, a period that Patti characterized as "Phase A+", the Phobos project would be developed mostly on paper, with only limited technology development. Patti said that under current circumstances it would be very difficult to predict when the Phobos sample return mission could be launched.

Lunar impact

Another potential victim of the ExoMars delay could be the Russian-led lunar missions. The Luna-Glob project (a.k.a Luna-25) was to herald Russia’s long-awaited return to lunar exploration with a landing near the northern pole of the Moon. Conceived back in the 1990s, Luna-Glob is currently scheduled for launch in 2019, followed by a lunar orbiter known as Luna-26.

However, the Luna series is being built at NPO Lavochkin, the same company that is the prime contractor for the ExoMars project on the Russian side. Still, the director of the Moscow-based Space Research Institute, IKI, Lev Zeleny insisted on Monday that even after the ExoMars had slipped to 2020, his team still aims to launch Luna-Glob in 2019. Patti echoed Zeleny saying that ESA is so far sticking with the Russian schedule aiming to launch a follow-on Luna-Resurs lander (a.k.a. Luna-27) to the lunar South Pole in 2020. In fact, ESA just released an image of a drill that would be installed on Luna-Resurs to probe for possible ice deposits as deep as two meters below the lunar surface. Built by Italy-based Finmeccanica, the drill would be the primary instrument onboard the Russian lander.